French intel's mouthpiece hits rock bottom
Spreading yet another anti-Azerbaijani fake

ANALYTICS  16 February 2024 - 15:28

No country can exist without intelligence services. As a rule, counterintelligence guards internal security. Its assistant - intelligence is required to collect information about potential opponents or competitors, thereby ensuring state security and strategic advantage in various spheres beginning from military power and ending with advanced industrial technologies. The intelligence services are invisible to ordinary people, but this does not mean that the representatives of the intelligence services have a serene life and attend only social events in foreign embassies.

On the contrary, events occur rapidly and sometimes even, when necessary, the information connected with the intelligence services is disseminated by the media outlets. Of course, taking into account the specifics of the above-mentioned organisations, often “leaks” are misinformation aimed at ordinary and final consumers.

A long preamble to this article was required for the following purpose.

Baku’s independent policy, and especially the 44-day second Karabakh war, the great victory and, accordingly, the defeat of Armenia, divided the positions of Azerbaijan and France led by Emmanuel Macron. Macron, who has been severely criticised in Africa, dreams of resuming his authority among the French people, and therefore, uses Armenia, with the help of which he would like to restore France’s greatness.

However, Azerbaijan hampers, as it opposes the strengthening of France in the South Caucasus, realising that Macron intends to disrupt stability here, provide Armenia with weapons, encourage revanchist forces in Armenia and thereby prepare the ground for unleashing new wars. That’s why all these resolutions of the French Parliament appeared. As the intelligence services always follow in the wake of the policy of their authorities, then, of course, the French General Directorate for External Security was actively involved in the anti-Azerbaijani policy of Paris.

We will not remind about the spy scandals between Azerbaijan and France. We have devoted more than one article to them and the failures of French intelligence in Azerbaijan. It would seem that instead of taking a time out, and maybe even preparing a report for the French political leadership on the advisability of restoring Baku’s trust towards France, the General Directorate for External Security leaked false information, the purpose of which was to show that the Azerbaijani authorities were afraid of angry France and through special services tried to probe the ground for the normalisation of the Azerbaijan-France relations.

Our readers are aware of Intelligence Online’s articles. Although Intelligence Online positions itself as an independent media outlet, it is in fact the mouthpiece of French intelligence.

Thus, an article was published on this website on February 12, which stated that the Azerbaijani intelligence services allegedly appealed to the Mossad with a request for the Israelis to initiate and mediate negotiations between Azerbaijani and French intelligence officers to reduce tension in bilateral relations.

Why did they appeal to Mossad? The French explain this by saying that there are trusting relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, and that Baku has become the world’s second-biggest buyer of modern Israeli weapons, which helped it win in 2020 and 2023.

As a result, Israel does not notice Armenia and has not yet recognised the so-called “Armenian genocide”. In parallel, the article describes “the strong positions of the Mossad in Azerbaijan”, that allegedly “Israel is using the Azerbaijani territory against Iran”, and that “Baku is dissatisfied that Paris is introducing Yerevan to the European family” as Azerbaijan acts in the wake of Russia.

According to Intelligence Online, despite the Israelis and the Azerbaijanis having excellent relations at all levels, nevertheless, allegedly, the Mossad refused Baku’s request because “it is too busy with the situation in the Middle East and does not want to get involved in another conflict situation”.

That is, on the one hand, Paris wants to show that Azerbaijan, being the “initiator” of the tension, got scared and is seeking reconciliation with France by any means. On the other hand, the French tried to sow distrust and stir up anti-Azerbaijani sentiments in the Iranian leadership, which amid the death sentence imposed on the perpetrator of the terrorist attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran, have recently subsided.

Moreover, there is an attempt to downgrade the level of combat effectiveness of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, which allegedly won only thanks to advanced Israeli weapons. As for “introducing Yerevan to the European family” this seems completely absurd. It will only be better for us if Armenia is transferred to Marseille.

This is proven by the entire recent history of the country that Baku acts in the wake of only its own national interests, and the desire to present Azerbaijan in the pro-Russian camp is also a slight attempt to use the Russian-Ukrainian geopolitical crisis to negatively influence the perception of Azerbaijan as a sovereign player in the system of international relations.

Obviously, there is a rather crude work of the French intelligence services, which were unable to influence - directly or indirectly Azerbaijan’s policy.

This became even more clear after our conversations on this issue with sources in the Azerbaijani special services, who smiled after reading Intelligence Online’s article. According to the source, the article is the wild imagination of the French side. Baku has never made such requests either to the Mossad or to any other organisations.

“The closest thing we have to Paris is the croissants at the breakfast buffet,” our source joked.

Perhaps, France, through such misinformation, hints at a potential interest in dialogue amid its own failures. In the sophisticated games of the world's leading intelligence services, the French have suffered numerous failures in recent decades, namely, hostage-taking in Paris, an attack on the Air Products plant near Lyon when a manager was beheaded, terrorist attacks within the country, Africa and now Azerbaijan. It is not surprising that, against such an unfavourable background, French intelligence was removed from the TOP 5 best in the world long ago. Perhaps, the French intelligence officers succeeded in the low-grade detective novels.

Caliber.Az