With the South Caucasus still bubbling in the wake of the 2020 war, Tehran is stirring the pot with strategic aims in mind.
Iranian-Azerbaijani relations, or, more precisely, the steady rise in tension between Tehran and Baku, has been a key development in South Caucasus politics for the past two years. As events early in 2023 have shown, this confrontation has reached a fundamentally new level, altering the balance of interests in the region and making it necessary to seriously assess the risk of a new military conflict.
The contradictions between the two countries suddenly reached boiling point on the morning of 27 January, when news broke of an attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran. The inaction of the Iranian police and the whitewashed official version – alleging a retaliatory action with family motives – caused a wave of indignation in Azerbaijan. Baku officially dubbed the attack “an act of terror” and demanded its speedy investigation, while also indefinitely suspending operations at the embassy. The continued closure of the embassy (although a consulate in Tabriz still functions) has, in effect, reduced the level of bilateral relations.
Anti-Baku Campaign Breaks Out on Two Fronts
In the following two months, Iranian media connected to the security elite intensified openly anti-Azerbaijani reports. These included denial of Azerbaijan’s history independent of Iran, personal attacks on its leadership, and claims of Iran’s military superiority.
Intriguingly, a rare armed incident of unclear origin occurred in Baku during this time. After an assassination attempt on Fazil Mustafa, a member of the Azerbaijani parliament known for his pro-Turkish views and criticism of Iran, four suspects were detained and accused of carrying out the attack on political orders. This was soon followed by a series of anti-Azerbaijani moves in Iran, including the expulsion of four Iranian diplomats accused of espionage. Verbal exchanges between the two governments resulted in a conversation between their foreign ministers, followed by conciliatory remarks from officials on both sides, including an article by an influential international affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, calling for good neighborly relations to be maintained.
The fundamental question today is this: why did the Iranian leadership, unlike in numerous previous diplomatic disputes, decide to consistently raise the stakes, while Baku accepted this challenge without apparent difficulties?
Several factors have contributed to this situation. While Moscow and Tehran have a longstanding strategic partnership, Russia’s physical presence in the region has acted as a counterweight to Iranian ambitions in the South Caucasus. However, with Russia’s weakening position due to its involvement in Ukraine, Turkey and Western countries have become more active, potentially loosening Iran’s role in the region. This includes the efforts of the United States and European Union to broker a lasting settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since Azerbaijan recaptured much of the disputed territory in the 2020 war with Armenia.
Such engagement in the region concerns Iran’s leadership because of the potential loss of its leverage amid increased Western influence – not to mention possible morale-boosting effects for Iranian Azerbaijanis hoping that Azerbaijan will be able to solidify the gains of the war. This has led to Iran behaving more aggressively, a development that may also be related to the recent achievement of an agreement with Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations and de-escalate tensions, reducing the pressure on Tehran and increasing the potential to act elsewhere.
Tehran Reaches Out to Armenia
Baku is increasingly frustrated with Iran’s hostile rhetoric under the Ebrahim Raisi government, leading to heightened reactions to any misunderstandings. The lack of trust between the leaders is a significant factor in foreign policy, and Azerbaijan is concerned about Iranian activity toward Armenia, particularly as peace negotiations carry on in Washington, Brussels, and to some extent in Moscow.
For these reasons, unambiguous signals sent from Tehran meant for Armenian ears, including statements such as “Iran will not tolerate a change of borders in the region” (by which in Armenia they usually mean the opening of a road linking Azerbaijan with Turkey through Armenian territory in Zangezur) and the opening of an Iranian consulate in the border town of Kapan, did little to calm Azerbaijani nerves. On 9 April, Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan was received in Tehran by his Iranian counterpart Ali Shamkhani (recently dismissed), a man who is considered the main protagonist in the successful negotiations with Saudi Arabia.
Iran’s sale of drones to the Russian army, though inferior to Turkish and Israeli models, also alarmed Baku because of their affordability and the ease of replenishing them, stoking concerns about Iran’s expanding influence in Armenia if it were to provide weapons to Yerevan, a prospect that Armenian supporters of rapprochement with Tehran have raised.
Factoring Israel Into the Equation
The matter of Israel and its strategic partnership with Azerbaijan undoubtedly plays a big role in Iran’s confrontational policy. Even if the ghost of “international Zionism” on the Iranian border plays the role of a convenient bogeyman for the regime’s propaganda, allowing it to significantly increase the popularity of anti-Azerbaijani rhetoric, relations between Azerbaijan and Israel are objectively a bone in Tehran’s throat.
Tehran University professor Ali Bigdeli’s remark in a recent interview that Israel could launch attacks against Iran from Azerbaijani territory echoes the position of most of the Iranian elite. These fears climbed significantly after the January attack by Israeli drones on military installations in Isfahan, a city in central Iran.
Despite a longstanding friendship with Israel, Azerbaijan has been cautious not to provoke its southern neighbor unless necessary. The Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv was opened only recently, after Baku grew even more frustrated with Tehran’s more aggressive stance. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s unambiguous remark about the “common threat” to the two countries during his visit to Baku on 30 May underlined their shared belief that Iran represents the major threat to peace and security in the region.
Domestic factors within Iranian policy, alongside geopolitical considerations, contribute significantly to the rise in tensions. Recent events have intensified the internal struggle among influential groups within Iran’s power elite. The Revolutionary Guard, once a regime watchdog, now operates as an alternative elite with its own interests, often diverging from the Supreme Leader and clergy. This group takes a hawkish stance and exhibits hostility toward Azerbaijan, viewing the country as part of Iran’s rightful hegemony. Despite disagreements, Khamenei’s tacit approval of the Guard’s hardline stance recognizes the force’s crucial role in the conduct of the regime’s foreign policy and its very survival.
Iran’s tightening of policy toward Azerbaijan, up to balancing on the brink of an open conflict, is the expected result of its complex internal dynamics, given Tehran’s historical attitude toward its northern neighbor as a kind of “Iranian Ukraine” (a historically and culturally close country that has chosen a sharply different path of development and pursues an independent foreign policy).
The outlook for the Iranian-Azerbaijani confrontation remains unclear, with concerns of a direct military conflict and Iranian intervention in border areas. Given the full-scale war in Ukraine, such forecasts should be taken seriously. However, there is a high probability of both parties scaling back and avoiding further escalation. Experts suggest that Iran typically acts discreetly rather than following its loud rhetoric. Moreover, considering the significant number of Iranian Azerbaijanis (according to various estimates, they number from 17 to 25 million, far outnumbering the 10 million total population of Azerbaijan, and make up the majority in regions directly adjacent to Azerbaijan) and Iran’s dependence on Azerbaijan in key areas like the “North-South” Eurasian transit corridor, military escalation is highly unlikely.
Iran’s aggressive behavior toward Baku aligns with a global trend seen during the Ukrainian war, where various actors exploit the West’s focus on the conflict to advance their own interests. This pattern can be observed with China, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others. For Iran, threatening Baku serves as a means to pressure the West, creating a major clash of interests in the South Caucasus that becomes a headache for Western powers. This tactic aims to influence the negotiations on reviving and bringing Washington back on board the stalled 2015 deal for international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program, prompting a revision of the longstanding policy of isolating Iran.
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Murad Muradov is the co-founder and deputy director of the Topchubashov Center, a Baku-based international affairs think tank. His areas of expertise cover security and geopolitics in the South Caucasus and post-Soviet countries and international political economy.
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