08:15     07 April 2021    

The fact that a joint venture has been established in Azerbaijan for the production of high-tech modern equipment using Israeli technologies is positive.

The fact that a joint venture has been established in Azerbaijan for the production of high-tech modern equipment using Israeli technologies is positive. This is no longer surprising, at least for the countries of the Caucasus, since Azerbaijan buys a lot of defense products from Israel. Moreover, such close cooperation with Israel has been going on for a long time. At present, the share of Israeli military products in Azerbaijani imports is quite high. I even recently read the figure that the military products of Israeli and Turkish production today account for 80 percent of all that Azerbaijan imports. This is quite a lot and shows that there is confidence in the products of Israeli production in Azerbaijan. Reality shows that cooperation with Israel is beneficial for Azerbaijan and has the most positive dynamics. It helps to solve a lot of issues. And the joint venture allows to increase the production of many types of equipment. Israel gains access to various military documentation of the defense industry, as a result, the company will create new kamikaze drones. This is all very positive. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this is an already established sphere of cooperation that suits both Israel and Azerbaijan. We know that the past 2020 has twice shown the effectiveness of Israeli military products. For example, during the April War in 2016. Then modern Israeli drones proved that they can be a very effective means of warfare. Also, Israeli drones were successfully used during the Second Karabakh war. Israeli technology managed to break the situation, make it so that Azerbaijan was able to liberate the occupied territories and reach new frontiers of its development. We have fairly large partners in the South Caucasus. The largest, of course, is Azerbaijan, the second is Georgia. We in Israel pride ourselves on supplying drones, electronic equipment systems and other military equipment. Moreover, these weapons are supplied even to the countries of the Middle East, in particular, to the UAE. There is even information that weapons are being supplied to Saudi Arabia. As for Azerbaijan, we have a fairly serious nomenclature. Moreover, we know that the first serious contract dates back to 2001. If we talk about later years, it must be said that in 2012 Azerbaijan purchased Israeli drones worth $ 1 billion 600 million. That's a lot. It is clear that this contributed to raising the arsenal of the Azerbaijani army to a qualitatively new level. In addition, in Israel it is a fairly well-known fact that back in 2011, an Israeli aeronautics company opened a plant for the production of drones in Azerbaijan. Cooperation with Azerbaijan is tested and contracts are signed during the visits of our top leaders to Azerbaijan. The first decision to establish joint ventures was made in July 2009, when Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Baku. Then the first contract for the supply of large enough equipment was signed. The contract for an even larger bag was signed during Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Baku in 2016. Then a lot was said about the supply of various equipment and it was decided to develop cooperation in the military sphere. It was decided to establish cooperation between the Israeli foreign intelligence service and colleagues from Azerbaijan. As you can see, both countries are committed to further deepening cooperation and, over time, the rapid development of bilateral relations in many areas. The author is the Associate of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Vladimir Mesamed.

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