Intent on staying on Tehran’s good side, Armenia and Azerbaijan have both saluted the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei to be Iran’s Supreme Leader. The congratulatory notes sent by Yerevan and Baku highlight the delicate geopolitical balance that both are trying to maintain amid the ongoing US-Israeli air campaign to cause the Islamic Republic’s collapse.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan share a frontier with Iran. Meanwhile, both are heavily invested in developing a US-backed trade corridor, known as TRIPP or the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. They are likewise striving to finalize a provisional peace deal brokered personally by President Donald Trump.

Under the circumstances, both Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev clearly hope that their proffered congratulations to Khamenei do not cause consternation in the White House. 

Aliyev’s message to the new Iranian Supreme leader was particularly solicitous. “I hope that together we will make further efforts to develop interstate relations in a spirit of mutual respect and trust, in accordance with the interests of our peoples,” Aliyev wrote, according to a transcript of his message published by his press service. 

The tone is understandable given that Azerbaijani-Iranian tension continues to run high following a March 5 Iranian drone strike on Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan. Since then, Azerbaijani officials have undertaken a variety of measures aimed at avoiding another attack.

So far, Pashinyan and Aliyev appear to have threaded a diplomatic needle, given that there has been no adverse reaction from Washington yet concerning their actions. At the same time, Trump told the administration-friendly television channel Fox News that he was generally “not happy” with the Khamenei’s selection.

Among Central Asian nations, only Tajikistan, a country that shares close cultural and linguistic ties with Iran, offered congratulations to Khamenei, who replaced his father after he was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli air war. 

Meanwhile, social media in Central Asia is abuzz with posts expressing concern that the toxic smoke caused by US-Israeli attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure may reach Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The meteorological services of both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have tried to tamp down social media-driven rumors about potential hazardous fallout from the war. For example, the Uzbek agency, Uzhydromet, dismissed the possibility of toxic rain reaching the country, adding that there has been no discernable impact on air quality caused by events in Iran.

Elsewhere, it appears that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is attempting to mediate an end to the warfare in Iran. A readout of a phone conversation released by the Kremlin revealed that Putin and Trump talked about the war and other issues for an hour on March 9.

“The Russian President put forward a number of considerations aimed at achieving a speedy political-diplomatic settlement of the Iranian conflict, taking into account, among other things, recent contacts held with leaders of the Persian Gulf states, with the President of Iran [Masoud] Pezeshkian, and with the heads of several other nations,” the Kremlin statement reads. It added that the two discussed the Ukraine war.

“The conversation was highly substantive and will undoubtedly be of practical significance for the future cooperation of the two countries across various spheres of international policy,” according to the Kremlin.

Trump described the conversation as “a very good talk.”

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