Iran is widely recognized as a destabilizing force that funds and supports terrorist organizations both in the Middle East and far beyond its borders. In recent years, its militant proxies have wreaked havoc in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq. Yet, by partnering with Israel, one small nation on Iran’s frontier—Azerbaijan—has managed not only to survive but to prosper.
US President Donald Trump should recognize that Azerbaijan has not only maintained thirty years of good relations with Israel but has also proven itself as a reliable security and economic partner of the Jewish State. If the United States were to build on Israel’s close relations with Azerbaijan to deepen its own ties to Baku, Washington could gain significant economic, diplomatic, and security benefits, including an enhanced partnership with a bulwark against Iranian influence.
A troublesome neighbor
Since gaining independence in 1991, the small Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan has struggled with Iran, which has threatened it with war, sponsored a terrorist group on its territory, and, according to Azerbaijani officials, supported hardline Islamist groups that tried to overthrow its government.
Azerbaijan, which neighbors Iran and has a population nine times smaller than the Islamic Republic’s, has largely maintained its autonomy and stability by relying on Israel and Turkey to keep Tehran at bay.
Iranian and Azerbaijani relations have long followed a repeating pattern of crises and détentes. Currently, their relations are in a détente phase. But as recently as August, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian proposed targeting Azerbaijan instead of directly striking Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
In 2022 and 2023, Iran threatened war against Azerbaijan multiple times, moving forces onto the border and holding massive military exercises, including a simulated invasion across the Aras River into Azerbaijan. Recently, Iran’s primary concern with Azerbaijan centered around the establishment of the Zangezur corridor, a proposed route between Armenia’s Syunik Province and Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan enclave. Such a corridor would put all of Iran’s northwest border under Turkish and Azerbaijani control, a scenario Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has called a “red line.”
Much like with Israel, the Islamic Republic has irreconcilable differences with Azerbaijan.
Today, although Iran does not allow ethnic censuses, an estimated thirty million ethnic Azerbaijanis live in northwest Iran—three times the population of Azerbaijan and a third of the Iranian population. Like other minorities in Iran, Azerbaijanis face political oppression as well as cultural, linguistic, economic, and even ecological discrimination.
Many of Iran’s policies toward its minorities stem from paranoia over ethnic separatism. As the national homeland of its largest minority, Iran sees Azerbaijan as posing a particular threat. As such, Tehran worries that Baku may inspire Azerbaijanis to revolt.
But Azerbaijanis in Iran don’t need inspiration from Baku to voice their dissent against their government’s foreign policy. During the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Iranian Azerbaijanis rushed to the borders to cheer on the Azerbaijani military. Some even openly protested the Islamic Republic’s support for Armenia in the conflict.
Iran has used two main tools against Azerbaijan—support for Armenia and proxy warfare.
Read the rest at the Atlantic Council.
Joseph Epstein is a Senior Fellow at Yorktown Institute.
