“Azerbaijani rope” in the Iran-Israel conflict
ARVAK Center comment, 19.10.2024(1)
On October 14, 2024, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian received an Azerbaijani delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev in Tehran. The parties’ official press releases regarding the content of the officials’ talks differ.
The information conveyed by official Baku to the local media contains only a mention of the conversation about cooperation in the fields of agriculture, energy and logistics. It is also reported that Sh. Mustafayev passed an official invitation to the IRI president to attend the COP29 conference in Baku.
Meanwhile, the Iranian press release emphasizes M. Pezeshkian’s words about the inadmissibility of interference by external players in the regional affairs of Iran, Azerbaijan and other neighboring countries. In particular, the Iranian president “warned that creating a foothold of extra-regional states in the region will not meet the interests of the countries of the region”. Also, according to the Iranian report, Pezeshkian confirmed Tehran’s respect for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and expressed the opinion that security can be ensured, and all problems can be solved through cooperation.
It is not difficult to guess that M. Pezeshkian had in mind the growing military-political presence of Israel in Azerbaijan and made it clear to the high-ranking Baku official that Tehran still considers its northern neighbor as a springboard for hostile actions against the Islamic Republic. And the Iranian president made it clear, practically in plain text, that until Baku ends its close military-political interaction with Tel Aviv, Azerbaijan will always be under the threat of an Iranian strike.
It should be assumed that Baku would prefer, against the backdrop of recent events in Lebanon and the general state of affairs in the Iranian-Israeli conflict, not to give Tehran any extra reasons for irritation and doubt. Right now, in anticipation of an Israeli retaliatory attack, Iran is extremely dangerous, and its further steps are difficult to predict. In anticipation of dangerous developments, the Aliyev regime should “lay low”, hoping that the Iranian-Israeli “storm” will pass Azerbaijan.
However, this is hardly possible now.
On October 14, 2024, immediately after M. Pezeshkian’s meeting with Sh. Mustafayev, the Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Eli Cohen met with the Azerbaijani Ambassador Mukhtar Mammadov in Tel Aviv. It is noteworthy that in his post on social media regarding the meeting, Minister E. Cohen did not touch upon the issues of energy cooperation between the countries, to which the meeting was supposedly dedicated, but rather a purely political agenda. In particular, he wrote: “Being a minister of foreign affairs, I opened the Azerbaijani embassy in Israel, the first embassy of a Shiite country. Our relations with Azerbaijan are strategic, and I have the intention to continue working on the consolidation of relations between our countries in all levels”.
Initially, the meeting between the Israeli minister from the economic bloc and the Azerbaijani ambassador is not an event of primary significance, but the fact that it was organized almost simultaneously with the Iranian-Azerbaijani negotiations in Tehran and was widely covered by Israeli media (unlike the Azerbaijani ones) testifies to the specific messages that Tel Aviv is sending to Tehran and, especially, to Baku.
Obviously, Israel is thus warning that it has no intention of abandoning its consistent policy of tying Azerbaijan to itself, even if this leads to an increase in the Iranian threat to Baku. Ultimately, as many analysts believe, this is precisely what the Jewish state has been striving for in recent years, when it assisted Azerbaijan seize the NKR, supplied Baku with weapons and technology, bought Azerbaijani oil and, finally, placed the Aliyev family’s investments in the Israeli real estate as a profit. These preferences were the price for Azerbaijan’s loyalty to Israel and the inevitable deterioration of relations between Iran and Baku.
Thus, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Azerbaijan to maintain a balance in its relations with the two above-mentioned conflicting states in conflict and avoid the danger of being “smashed” between them in the event of a full-scale war.
(1) The original (in Rus.) was posted on our website on 17.10.2024.
