Israel’s ally can change the battle

The relations of the countries in the South Caucasus region have often been described by analysts as “cold peace”. A fragile balance maintained through a tangled web of energy exports, secret intelligence cooperation and deep ethnic sensitivities. However, the incident of the UAV attack today in southern Azerbaijan put an end to this era of strategic ambiguity, when the country announced that it was closing the skies on the border with Iran for 12 hours. While the world’s eyes were on the massive exchange of fire between the US-Israel alliance and Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Levant, a new, and perhaps even more dangerous, arena opened up from the north.

Today’s drone attack on the international airport in Nakhchivan, an Azeri enclave sandwiched between Turkey, Armenia and Iran, constitutes the official “opening shot” of the “Northern Front”. For months, Azerbaijan has walked a tightrope, maintaining an official position of neutrality while its “glacial” alliance with Israel rumbled beneath the surface. Today, the Iranian regime, pushed to the wall Due to an internal collapse and external bombings, he finally decided to strike at the northern anchor of the Israeli strategy. “These attacks will not go unanswered,” the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan said in a statement, adding: “We are preparing the necessary response measures to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country and ensure the safety of citizens and civilian infrastructure.”

To understand why Iran chose to attack Azerbaijan, one must first understand the depth of the security connection between Baku and Jerusalem. President Ilham Aliyev once defined the relations between the countries as an iceberg, “nine-tenths of which is under the water.” In the context of the war, this sunken part became an existential threat to the Islamic Republic. For over two decades, Azerbaijan has served as Israel’s main energy pipeline, supplying about 40 percent of the country’s oil consumption through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. In return, Israel effectively rebuilt the modern Azeri army. It was these armaments that decided the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, and were only the tip of the iceberg.

Beyond military equipment, the alliance gives Israel an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” on Iran’s doorstep. For years, Tehran has claimed that the Mossad maintains sophisticated listening posts along the Haras River, and that the Sitalchai Air Force base has been trained to host Israeli F-35s or UAVs for short sorties towards the Natanz or Purdue nuclear facilities. While Operation “Harry’s Roar” continues to systematically dismantle the Iranian military infrastructure, the Revolutionary Guards have begun to see Azerbaijan as a forward base for the “Zionist entity”. The attack. In Nakhchivan is an attempt to signal to Baku that being close to Israel has a heavy price, one that could lead to the destruction of its infrastructure, similar to what the Gulf countries experienced last week.

Iran’s hesitancy to attack Azerbaijan so far has been mainly due to the “ethnic time bomb” ticking within its borders. Northern Iran is home to approximately 15 to 25 million ethnic Azeris, a population twice the size of the Republic of Azerbaijan itself. As tour guide and analyst Yigal Shlamaev points out, “Iran’s geo-demography is the regime’s Achilles heel. Only about 50 percent of Iran’s residents are ethnic Persians; the rest are a mosaic of Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, and Arabs, many of whom have experienced decades of systematic oppression.” Shlamaev emphasizes that the Azeri minority is especially dangerous for Tehran because it is not just a marginalized group, but a population that has a successful, secular and oil-rich “nation-state” right across the border.

The concept of “complete Azerbaijan” (Bütöv Azərbaycan) has haunted Iranian leaders since the fall of the Soviet Union. This vision aims for the unification of the Azeri people on both sides of the Haras River. While President Aliyev has historically been wary of formally claiming Iranian territory, his rhetoric has become more strident as the Iranian regime has weakened. At the end of 2022, he stated that “the young generation of the Turkish world should have the opportunity to study in their mother tongue”, a direct jab at the restrictions on the Azeri language in Iran. Today, when Iran is facing an acute economic crisis and violent repression that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of protesters, the fear of an Azeri separatist movement in Tabriz is no longer theoretical. The attack in Nakhchivan is a desperate attempt to force Baku to close its borders and deter any pan-Turkish uprising that might take advantage of the regime’s military tensions.

If the Israeli factor produces the military tension and the ethnic issue the internal threat, then the Zangzor Corridor, recently nicknamed the “Trump Route” or the TRIPP, provides the economic motive for Iranian aggression. The planned transport route is intended to connect the territory of Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan enclave through Armenian territory. For Baku and its ally Turkey, the corridor is the missing link in the “Turkish Bridge” that would allow a direct flow of goods and energy from Istanbul to the Caspian Sea and from there to Central Asia. For Iran, however, the corridor represents a “geopolitical stranglehold.” Historically, Iran was the main transit point for Azeri goods on their way to Nakhchivan, a role that gave Tehran significant leverage over Baku.

Completing the Zangzor Corridor would effectively cut off Iran’s land border with Armenia, its only non-Turkish gateway to the Caucasus and a vital bypass route for sanctioned goods. Tehran sees the corridor as a NATO-sponsored project that will permanently reduce its influence in the region. By striking Nakhchivan International Airport, the Iranian military is imposing a “kinetic veto”. They make it clear that any attempt to complete this transit route while the world is distracted by the war in the south will be met with immediate escalation. This is a battle for the future map of Eurasia: if the corridor opens, Iran will lose its position as a crossroads regional and become an isolated island surrounded by a Turkish-Israeli alliance.

Alongside the geopolitical maneuvers, the conflict has a deeply personal dimension for the thousands of Israeli tourists and Jewish residents in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan has long been considered a destination for Israelis, thanks to its secularism and its open support for the country. Eliyahu Abramov, director of the Center for the Israeli Traveler in Baku, describes a community that is now on the front line. He points out that while the local population remains an ardent supporter of Israel and opposed to “radical Islam”, the logistical reality of the war is beginning to show its signs. Israelis who visited Baku in recent days for business or for a trip find themselves “stuck”, with the Travelers Center and the Chabad House working around the clock to provide kosher meals and organize evacuations through the Georgian border.

“Iran is a neighbor, and you have to understand that Iranians and Azeris are Shiites, but the main difference is that Iran is an extreme republic and in Azerbaijan it’s the opposite, they support peace and the West,” says Abramov. “Azerbaijan was and remains a country that openly supports the Israelis. The Jewish community here has 14 synagogues, Chabad houses and schools, and is a very strong and wealthy community. The locals openly support Israel because they are against radical Islam.”

The humanitarian situation is further complicated by the influx of refugees from Iran. Since the end of February 2026, the border crossing in Astra has become a bottleneck for foreign and Iranian citizens seeking to escape the war raging in the heart of Iran. The government of Azerbaijan reported receiving citizens from over 19 countries, including European diplomats and Pakistani officers. This influx creates a paradoxical situation for Baku: while it serves as a humanitarian lifeline for those fleeing the crumbling Revolutionary Guards rule, it also faces the danger of a “demographic spillover.” In Aliyev’s government there is a deep fear that a massive influx of refugees from Iran, many of whom have lived under a theocratic regime for decades, could undermine the secular and authoritarian stability that the Aliyev dynasty has carefully built.

As of today, the thin peace between Iran and Azerbaijan has been broken. The UAV attack in Nakhchivan forced Azerbaijan to abandon neutrality and move to “strategic clarity”. With Turkey obligated to defend Baku according to the Shusha Declaration of 2021, and Israel unable to afford damage to its “northern anchor”, the attack on one airport may be the spark that ignites a wide Caucasian conflagration. The “iceberg” is already floating fully on the surface, and the collision course is determined.