The Israeli Haaretz newspaper published on March 5, an astounding article titled: \u201c92 Flights from Israeli Base Reveal Arms Exports to Azerbaijan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The article reported that on March 2, Azerbaijan\u2019s Silk Way Airlines\u2019 cargo plane landed in Israel\u2019s Ovda military airport, and two hours later returned to Baku via Turkey and the Georgian Republic. In the last seven years, this is the 92nd<\/sup> cargo flight from Baku to Ovda, the only airfield in Israel that is allowed to export explosives. These military shipments increased substantially during Azerbaijan\u2019s attacks on Armenia\/Artsakh in 2016, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Pres. Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has described Israel\u2019s covert relations with Azerbaijan as being like an iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel supplies almost 70% of Azerbaijan\u2019s weapons and in return receives about half of its imported oil. Haaretz quoted foreign media sources disclosing that: \u201cAzerbaijan has allowed the Mossad [Israel\u2019s intelligence agency] to set up a forward branch [in Azerbaijan] to monitor what is happening in Iran, Azerbaijan\u2019s neighbor to the south, and has even prepared an airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Reports from two years ago stated that the Mossad agents who stole the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled it to Israel via Azerbaijan. According to official reports from Azerbaijan, over the years Israel has sold it the most advanced weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haaretz revealed that Azerbaijan\u2019s Silk Way Airlines \u201coperates three weekly flights between Baku and [Israel\u2019s] Ben-Gurion International Airport with Boeing 747 cargo freighters.\u201d In addition, some Eastern European countries circumvent the ban on the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan by shipping them via Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The restriction of the sale of weapons by Europe and the United States to Armenia and Azerbaijan created an opportunity for Israel to earn billions of dollars in weapons\u2019 sales to Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haaretz reported that \u201cIsrael has exported a very wide range of weapons to the country [Azerbaijan] \u2014 starting with Tavor assault rifles all the way to the most sophisticated systems such as radar, air defense, antitank missiles, ballistic missiles, ships and a wide range of drones, both for intelligence and attack purposes. Israeli companies have also supplied advanced spy tech, such as communications monitoring systems from Verint and the Pegasus spyware from the NSO Group \u2014 tools that were used against journalists, the LGBT community and human rights activists in Azerbaijan, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Stockholm International Peace Institute wrote: \u201cIsrael\u2019s defense exports to Azerbaijan began in 2005 with the sale of the Lynx multiple launch rocket systems by Israel Military Industries (IMI Systems), which has a range of 150 kilometers (92 miles). IMI, which was acquired by Elbit Systems in 2018, also supplied LAR-160 light artillery rockets with a range of 45 kilometers, which, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, were used by Azerbaijan to fire banned cluster munitions at residential areas in Nagorno-Karabakh,\u201d even though Israel and 123 other countries have banned the use of cluster bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haaretz reported that \u201cIn 2007, Azerbaijan signed a contract to buy four intelligence-gathering drones from Aeronautics Defense Systems. It was the first deal of many. In 2008 it purchased 10 Hermes 450 drones from Elbit Systems and 100 Spike antitank missiles produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and in 2010 it bought another 10 intelligence-gathering drones. Soltam Systems, owned by Elbit, sold it ATMOS self-propelled guns and 120-millimeter Cardom mortars, and in 2017 Azerbaijan\u2019s arsenal was supplemented with the more advanced Hanit mortars. According to the telegram leaked in Wikileaks, a sale of advanced communications equipment from Tadiran was also signed in 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Haaretz, \u201cIsrael and Azerbaijan took their relationship up a level in 2011 with a huge $1.6 billion deal that included a battery of Barak missiles for intercepting aircraft and missiles, as well as Searcher and Heron drones from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). It was reported that near the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, a Barak battery shot down an Iskander ballistic missile launched by Armenia. Aeronautics Defense Systems also began cooperating with the local arms industry in Azerbaijan, where some of the 100 Orbiter kamikaze (loitering munitions) drones were produced \u2014 drones that Azerbaijan\u2019s defense minister called \u2018a nightmare for the Armenian army.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2021, \u201can indictment was filed against [Israel\u2019s] Aeronautics Defense Systems for violating the law regulating defense exports in its dealing with one of its most prominent clients. A court-imposed gag order prevents the publication of further details. A project to modernize the Azerbaijani army\u2019s tanks began in the early 2010s. Elbit Systems upgraded and equipped the old Soviet T-72 models with new protective gear to enhance the tanks\u2019 and their crews\u2019 survivability, as well as fast and precise target acquisition and fire control systems. The upgraded tanks, known as Aslan (Lion), starred in the 2013 military parade. Azerbaijan\u2019s navy was reinforced in 2013 with six patrol ships based on the Israel Navy\u2019s Sa\u2019ar 4.5-class missile boats, produced by Israel Shipyards and carrying the naval version of the Spike missiles, along with six Shaldag MK V patrol boats with Rafael\u2019s Typhoon gun mounts and Spike missile systems. Azerbaijan\u2019s navy also bought 100 Lahat antitank guided missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2014, \u201cAzerbaijan ordered the first 100 Harop kamikaze drones from IAI, which were a critical tool in later rounds of fighting. Azerbaijan also purchased two advanced radar systems for aerial warning and defense from IAI subsidiary Elta that same year\u2026. Two years later, Azerbaijan bought another 250 SkyStriker kamikaze drones from Elbit Systems. Many videos from the areas of fighting showed Israeli drones attacking Armenian forces\u2026. In 2016, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s visit to Baku, Aliyev revealed that contracts had already been signed between the two countries for the purchase of some $5 billion in \u2018defensive equipment.\u2019 In 2017, Azerbaijan purchased advanced Hermes 900 drones from Elbit Systems and LORA ballistic missiles from IAI, with a range 430 kilometers. In 2018, Aliyev inaugurated the base where the LORA missiles are deployed, at a distance of about 430 kilometers from Yerevan, Armenia\u2019s capital. During the war in 2020, at least one LORA missile was launched, and according to reports it hit a bridge that Armenia used to supply arms and equipment to its forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. More advanced Spike missiles were sent in 2019 and 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is appalling that the descendants of the Holocaust are supplying such massive lethal weapons to Azerbaijan to kill the descendants of the Armenian Genocide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Israeli Haaretz newspaper published on March 5, an astounding article titled: \u201c92 Flights from Israeli Base Reveal Arms Exports to Azerbaijan.\u201d The article reported that on March 2, Azerbaijan\u2019s Silk Way Airlines\u2019 cargo plane landed in Israel\u2019s Ovda military airport, and two hours later returned to Baku via Turkey and the Georgian Republic. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4101,"featured_media":43644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}