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Azerbaijan's president got a warm greeting from America's

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The Iranian president says his country doesn't "give a damn" about UN sanctions

That could change.

The tiny country nobody notices could find a place on the map for reasons other than disaster, papal visits, or attempted revolutions, should Washington’s crosshairs on Tehran include a radial view of the neighborhood.

Find the Black Sea and go east, or the Caspian and go west. If your map is bigger than pocket size, you should find the thumbnail of a republic that has practically nothing to offer the outside world, but a lot to lose should nuclear nonsense turn things weird(er) in the expanding neighborhood of Nightmare on Elohim’s Street.

As close as it is to the Biblical Ararat where Noah dropped anchor, it is also neighbored by one member of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”, Iran – a geographic juxtaposition fittingly metaphorical in the mounting rhetoric between America’s messianic-minded anti-evildoer and Iran’s own Allah-garch, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is a servant of two masters, Armenia, indentured by millions of USAID dollars, and owned in equal amounts by the Russians. And it is indebted to Iran for that nation’s good-neighbor policy that has kept Armenia commercially connected, when others sought to strangle her economically.

Steered by leadership better at pushing its luck than pulling its weight in matters democratic, Armenia may nonetheless be courted by the Leader of the Free World should GWB’s war wagons giddy on up to the East Side and lasso statues for a president from Texas whose wish to whup SOME sumbitch, puts the “W” in Weapons of Mass Delusion.

To whom Armenia would hitch its wagon could, oddly, be critical, probably predictable, but nonetheless intriguing in the whole scheme of global goofiness that 911 turned from a call for help, to a plea for sanity.

Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is only 487 miles from Tehran; there is only an 8-mile difference (479) in miles to Yerevan from Baghdad. Armenians themselves are close to the American Way because of USAID, but spiritually closer to Russia because of a USAIDon’tCareforYourPoliciesButLoveYourDollars disposition that favors the Russians even though the Yanks have propped up the place, while the Ruskies have pilfered it.

(While the US has annually served up about $90 million to the Armenian coffers, Russia meanwhile has given nary a ruble toward “international aid,” while demanding “equity for debt” that has resulted in Russian ownership of 70 percent of Armenia’s energy sources, including a 25-year management lease on the unfinished Iran-Armenia gas pipeline. Still, Armenia, for reasons that may be as simple as a common language – Russian – and a common continent, would likely choose the northern neighbor over the Western savior should all things be economically equal.)

Linked to Iran by land and to America by servitude, Armenia-focused conclusions could be drawn that Uncle Sam may look to Armenia for a little payback should Scud time light the southern horizon. Not likely. Except for airspace (which Armenia has provided for US attacks on Iraq), Armenia has little to offer. Its strategic uselessness, quite remarkably, is also its sustaining security resource. (I once asked a US State Department official what America got in return for its aid investment in Armenia. He replied: “Headaches.”)

She has neither oil nor sea. Valuable to no one except those bound to her oil-less, sea-less soul, she is also nobody’s threat. And, in an age in which nuclear capability is the steroid that turns weaklings into world threats, benign comfort is comfort nonetheless.

It is reasonable to conjecture that, should Iran’s TheoCrat and America’s ChosenOne continue down the path of ir-resistance, the US would turn to Turkey for launch support in staging its next middle-east theater of the absurd. Such is also short-sighted conjecture.

The presence of US airbases in Turkey is convenient, and that Muslim country is not guided politically by its historical religion. But Turkey gets 22 percent of its oil from Iran, and neither Jesus nor Mohammed might argue that in 21st century geo-theo-politics, oil is thicker than blood or belief. Besides, Turkey is being vetted for the European Union, an institution with a queer prejudice against blowing up societies over what amounts to bullheadedness.

Azerbaijan has a bigger border with Iran than Armenia. It also has more Azeris living in Iran (about 15 million) than there are Armenians world-wide. Tag-team destruction of your ethnically own is bad for your image, even if that image – in the case of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev – is being polished by the same Washington glad-handers who only recently barked that Aliyev’s presidency was fraudulently gained.

So, if your currency (in every meaning of the word) says “In God We Trust”, who will you turn to, looking for a friendly in a region that grows decidedly unfriendly with each Iraqi casualty and every threat from the Leader of the Free World, whose unfulfilled promise to “smoke out” the Ace of the Axis of Evil has gone up in a puff?

Enter one of the only potential allies with nothing to lose, Armenia – Christian, more or less democratic, and with one of the strongest lobbying forces in Washington in the form of the Armenian Assembly of America. Nothing to lose, that is, except its badly needed gas pipeline, its dependency on Russia (home of the largest Armenian Diaspora and an opponent of US aggression toward Iran), and the chance of enflaming (as if they could be further heated) passions of arch enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey, by brown-nosing the red, white and blue.

Armenia, rightly depicted by one European think tank as “northern middle east,” may be destined for a role she neither desires nor can afford to decline. Or maybe not . . .

Despite different religious persuasions, Armenia enjoys a cozy and profitable relationship with its southern neighbor, Iran, home to about 100,000 Armenians. With trade borders closed to the east (Azerbaijan) and to the west (Turkey), Iran is a vital economic link for landlocked Armenia.

Armenia has equally friendly relations with northern neighbor Georgia, whose Black Sea ports are Armenia’s trade link to Europe. Recent attempts, though, by Mikhail Saakashvili’s administration to “Georgian-ize” historic Armenian buildings and churches have angered some 250,000 Georgian Armenians, especially in the predominantly-Armenian region of Javakhk. Nor are the Armenians happy that a new railway will connect Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, while leaving Armenia out of the loop. And this, after Armenia was geopolitically snubbed when the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline was laid out.

While Armenia continues to suck Russian teat, Georgia has not only weaned itself but in fact has developed a contentious relation with Russia since kicking out former Soviet foreign minister Edward “the Caucasus Fox” Shevardnadze and rosily replacing him with Columbia-grad, English-fluent Saakhashvili. And: While striking (arguably more costly) concessions with Armenia over the controversial doubling of gas prices last winter, Russia made no such deals with Stalin’s home country and even recently banned the import of Georgian wine, a leading Georgia export.

Last year Georgia kicked the Russian military out of their bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki. And, while Russian-language street and business signs are more common than English in Yerevan, in Tbilisi, speaking the official language of the former USSR is met with an emphatic “nyet”.

Western-leaning Georgia taking on the role of Green Room for a possible US edition of “Live from Iran” would effectively let Armenia off the hook, and happily so, as both Georgia and Iran are far more important in most ways (oil excepted) to Armenia than to the US.

From 2002-2004, the US spent $64 million to “train and equip” Georgian soldiers to NATO standards. The program was renewed last year with similar funding. As of the end of last year it is believed that Georgia has amped-up its military capability with (US-sponsored) training of about 25,000 reservists and conscripts. Their training is said to be directed toward solving Georgia’s South Ossetia problem. Their training, too, corresponds in time to when (according to a “New Yorker” magazine article that initiated much of the current debate) the United States accelerated its program of covert operations in Iran . . .

It is quite likely, and can be hoped, that the United Nations will end up doing the dirty work in Iran. And it would most likely be done with sanctions that, eventually if not immediately, would cause damage to Armenia. Will there be compensations? Perhaps then we would learn who is Armenia’s friend, and who is using her for favors.

“Neutrality” is the catch-phrase of officials and analysts here, in evaluating Armenia’s role in the US-Iran squabble. Off the record by officials, and among conversations with the common, an Armenian word is used.

Though in this case word play serves personal opinion with unexpected and giddy pleasure, I swear I am not making it up when I tell you the following:

In the (Western) Armenian language, the word for “idiot” is “abush” as in: a Bush.

Let us hope this remains a war of words.