So what's with the Iranian-Caucasian love affair?

"...Sheer pragmatism. Other regional powers have made no qualms about exploiting the Caucasus to flex their military, diplomatic, and economic muscle. Russia has become increasingly territorial in the area since its August 2008 war with Georgia. In 2008, Moscow agreed to build Russian military outposts in Georgia's breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and last month, Moscow and Yerevan signed an agreement that will keep Russian troops in Armenia until 2044. Turkey, the other large regional power, has also increased its influence in the South Caucasus in recent years, through economic deals and with diplomatic promises to end the region's frozen conflicts.

Iran, meanwhile, has largely been left to watch its influence decline. Facing these threats to its regional importance -- in addition to a fresh round of EU, U.S., and Kremlin-backed U.N. sanctions, internal unrest and an array of external military threats -- Tehran has chosen to fight back with vigorous diplomatic campaigns in its near abroad. "Iran is trying to contribute in a meaningful way to the security and stability in the South Caucasus in order to impress upon everyone the legitimacy and credibility of its role as a regional player," notes Steven Blank, an analyst at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute. "It's a pragmatic maneuver above all else."

Iran's primary motivation, Blank said, is to keep other countries, particularly the United States, from getting too chummy on its northern border. For Iran, which borders Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan -- all wobbly nations with a significant U.S. military presence -- a U.S. military base in the South Caucasus would be a disaster. Iran is calculating that the way to prevent that from happening is through strengthened alliances -- or at least mitigated ill-will -- with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. "The message they keep repeating is: We are friends, we are economic partners, but if you allow a U.S. base on your soil, very bad things will happen to you," says a Georgian executive who spoke anonymously in order not to compromise his relationship with Iranian officials. "They are friendly, but the message is clear."...

With Russo-Georgian relations in tatters, Iran's ambassador to Georgia, Majid Saber, has worked hard to style Tehran as Tbilisi's only reliable friend and ally. "No U.S. help was there when you needed it most," Saber told reporters in Tbilisi in May, citing the George W. Bush administration's unwillingness to defend Georgia militarily during the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. "Real friendship is demonstrated in hard times."

In Azerbaijan, Iran has recently renewed its calls for the resolution of regional problems -- like the demarcation of Caspian Sea energy resources and the stubborn Nagorno-Karabakh conflict -- by regional, not international, actors. But Tehran's foreign policy there is primarily shaped by Tehran's fear of a separatist uprising among Iran's ethnic Azeris, which make up a quarter of the Iranian population. That fear has served to temper Iran's encouragement of either religious ideology or nationalism in Shiite Azerbaijan. While Iran's offer to mediate Nagorno-Karabakh is likely to be ignored by both Azerbaijan and the OSCE, which oversees the diplomatic mission there, Iran has in the past served as an even-keeled mediator in the conflict zone, prizing stability over Islamic fraternity along its northern border.

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