Bordering Russia and Iran while cultivating Israel and Turkey, Baku seeks security through competing partnerships—and offers itself as a mediator when its allies collide
“We cannot close our eyes and say there is no Iran, there is no Russia. There are.”
Nargiz Mammadova, a research fellow in international relations at the CASPIA Center, was describing the reality Azerbaijan confronts whenever it looks at the map. Speaking with The Media Line in Jerusalem, she said decisions made in Moscow or Tehran cannot be dismissed as distant developments. Both countries border Azerbaijan, placing instability in either one directly inside Baku’s security calculations.
Mammadova was among 13 Muslim professionals from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan brought to Israel by Sharaka, a nongovernmental organization founded after the 2020 Abraham Accords to promote people-to-people diplomacy between Israelis and communities across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Holocaust remembrance and meetings about Israeli society were part of the visit, but regional security was never far from the discussion. For the Azerbaijani participants, Israel is one element of a crowded diplomatic picture that also includes Russia, Iran, Turkey, Armenia and the wider South Caucasus.
The result is a foreign policy built less around choosing sides than keeping several doors open. Azerbaijan buys Israeli weapons, regards Turkey as a vital ally, trades with Russia, shares a long border with Iran and is pursuing peace with Armenia after decades of conflict.
“If you look to the map in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan has five neighbors, and two of them are into war situation, or kind of war situation,” Mammadova said.
She described the ability to work with competing powers as a defining characteristic of Azerbaijani diplomacy. Baku, she argued, cannot afford to organize its foreign policy around one dominant relationship.
Mammadova applied the same reasoning to Armenia, saying agreements between governments must be accompanied by “building bridges between people” and greater trust between the two societies.
Farid Shukurlu, an international law and security researcher and nonresident fellow at the Research Institute for European and American Studies, told The Media Line that his criticism was directed at the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), not at Iranian society.
“Even though Azerbaijan’s position was formally neutrality, the country was still targeted by the IRGC in the Nakhchivan enclave,” he said.
Nakhchivan is an Azerbaijani exclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory. Azerbaijan said four drones arriving from Iran struck the region on March 5, injuring four people and damaging Nakhchivan International Airport and a school. Iran denied responsibility and promised an investigation.
The incident demonstrated, in Shukurlu’s view, that avoiding direct participation in a conflict does not necessarily protect Azerbaijan from pressure or military spillover from its southern neighbor.
Those concerns have contributed to stronger defense ties with Israel. Azerbaijan has purchased Israeli weapons for years and used Israeli-made systems during its conflicts with Armenian forces over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Shukurlu said “the military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel is at an all-time high,” but rejected suggestions that Baku would allow the relationship to turn Azerbaijani territory into a base for military action.
Azerbaijani territory will never be used against a third state
“It’s also in Azerbaijan’s national security concept not to get dragged into regional conflicts,” he said. “Azerbaijani territory will never be used against a third state.”
Baku faces a different balancing problem when relations deteriorate between Israel and Turkey. Ankara remains one of Azerbaijan’s closest political and security partners, while Israel has become an important supplier of military technology.
Shukurlu said Azerbaijani officials see no reason to sacrifice either relationship.
Azerbaijan is not going to give up on Israel, Azerbaijan is not going to give up on Turkey, because these countries are equally important to our security, to our existence, and to our image in the international arena
“Azerbaijan is not going to give up on Israel, Azerbaijan is not going to give up on Turkey, because these countries are equally important to our security, to our existence, and to our image in the international arena,” he said.
Energy makes the triangle even harder to separate.
Ibrahim Mammadov, head of the Turkic-Western Engagement Initiative and a visiting research fellow at the Danube Institute, pointed to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries crude oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Some of that oil is then loaded onto tankers bound for Israel.
“I do not believe that it will ever stop because, for Azerbaijan, it’s an extremely important pipeline,” he told The Media Line.
Closing the route would hurt Azerbaijan by restricting one of its principal export channels and Israel by reducing a major source of crude oil. Turkey receives transit and port benefits, while the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation holds a stake in the pipeline consortium.
The same network that binds the three countries together economically also gives Baku a reason to prevent disputes between Israel and Turkey from becoming direct confrontations.
Azerbaijan has already hosted several rounds of talks between Israeli and Turkish officials seeking to prevent clashes in Syria, where both countries maintain competing security interests.
“We know that there have been formal and informal talks that were held in Baku,” Mammadov said.
He wants Azerbaijan to continue serving as a meeting place when its two partners cannot speak easily elsewhere.
“I hope they can be found in the middle ground.”
