After a week of hostilities between the US and Israel, the focus is on whether there will be “boots on the ground” against the Iranian regime, beyond air strikes, and who are the “willing” candidates to take on the difficult ground operations. Suddenly, in addition to the Kurds, there is another “candidacy”: the Azeris. How did we get to this development and how likely is it that we will see another front open up, this time in the south of the Caucasus?
Last Thursday (5/3) four drones, which according to the Azeri Ministry of Defense came from Iran, struck the province of Nakhchivan in , injuring four people.
One drone targeted the Nakhichevan airport, which is about 10 km from the border with Iran, while another fell near a school in the village of Sakharabad.
JUST IN: 🇮🇷🇦🇿 Iran strikes Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan International Airport.
— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo)
The third of the four drones hit civilian infrastructure, while the last was neutralized by Azeri forces. Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bairamov announced the withdrawal of diplomats from Iran, not accepting Iran’s denial of responsibility for the attack.
The strategic importance of the “Trump Corridor”
Nakhchivan is a region of great strategic importance, as it is an enclave of Azerbaijan that does not have a direct connection with the main country. It borders Armenia on one side and Turkey and Iran on the other, while it is separated from the main body of Azerbaijan by an Armenian stretch of about 40 kilometers. For this reason, Nakhchivan is at the center of the interest of the US, which has planned the so-called “Trump Corridor” (previously called the “Zangezur Corridor”), which connects Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan energy-wise, next to the border with Iran.
The “Trump Corridor” favors Turkey’s influence in Azerbaijan as well as in the Turkic nations of Central Asia, and mediates the relevance of Russia and Iran. It is related to Armenia’s pro-Western turn under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, but also the recent removal of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev from Russian influence. For these reasons, the “Trump Corridor”, which passes through Nakhchivan, causes intense concern in Iran.
Close friendship with USA but also respect for Khamenei’s memory
President Aliyev’s friendly relations with Donald Trump culminated in the tripartite meeting together with the Prime Minister of Armenia at the White House last August. The Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the important conflicts resolved in favor of Azerbaijan by the “peacemaker” Trump. The “Trump Corridor,” decided at the time and confirmed in Vice President Jay D. Vance’s recent visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan last month, marks an increased American presence in the South Caucasus.
However, Aliyev was also one of the political leaders who sent condolences to Iran for the ouster of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is half-Azeri. And, most importantly, the president of Azerbaijan was, according to his statement, the only head of state to officially visit an Iranian embassy to offer condolences.
Why the Iranians are denying responsibility for the drones
After the recent strikes in Nakhchivan, Tehran denied responsibility for the four drones, following with a peculiar “consistency” the following principle: it seems so far to accept the strikes on US bases and other US targets in the Arab monarchies of the Gulf, but denies civilian targets in Arab countries. Azerbaijan has no US bases on its soil and the possible reasons for its targeting are its recent friendly relations with Israel and joint energy projects with the US.
It should be noted that 30-40% of the oil imported into Israel passes through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is of pivotal importance for any targeting of Israel’s energy sources. Any damage to the pipeline would also affect Turkey and the EU. Azerbaijan’s cooperation with Israel also includes defense and cyber-security, with an emphasis on drone technology. “Oil over military technology” would be a quick summary of the relationship between the two countries, which is said to have played a major role in the victory over Armenia and is making Iran nervous.
Azerbaijan also supplies natural gas to EU countries, so a possible transfer of the conflict to it would raise energy costs for Europe and even in combination with the problems facing Qatar.
In any case, Azerbaijan, unconvinced by Iran’s denial of responsibility, has its eye on the next day, deploying an army in its region adjacent to Iran with which it shares a 700km border. Azerbaijan’s air defenses now focus, among other things, on countering enemy drones. President Aliyev spoke of countermeasures against Iran, although he added that his country is not interested in participating in operations against Iran, as its foreign policy does not allow it. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his support for Azerbaijan.
Azeris are the largest ethnic minority in Iran
The “elephant in the room” is the fact that Azeris are the largest ethnic minority in Iran. Although Tehran systematically avoids giving official figures, Azeris inside Iran are estimated at well over 10 million and at least 15% of the country’s population, while more ambitious estimates put the figure at 20-30%. A 10% of the Azeri minority live in the provinces of Iranian Azerbaijan, while at least as many are assimilated, residing in the capital and other urban centers. This means that there are probably more Azeris inside Iran than in Azerbaijan itself.
The state of Azerbaijan is a former province of the Persian Empire that was ceded to the Russian Empire in 1828 and then became a component of the Soviet Union before becoming independent. But even more important are the provinces that remained in the Persian empire and were bequeathed to modern Iran, with the important cities of Tabriz and Ardabil. From a redemptive point of view, the Iranian provinces constitute the “southern” Azerbaijan that awaits its reunification with the free “northern” Azerbaijan or, at least, its secession from Iran.
Could the Azeris be Iran’s ‘boots on the ground’?
Iran’s Azeris, as the largest ethnic minority, are seen as one of the dangerous “insurgency candidates” in the event of a weakening of central Iranian authority with the other two being the Kurds and the Baloch. It is true that the Azeris, compared to the Kurds, have much less developed separatist activity, and also, unlike the Kurds who led the uprising last January, the Azeris had a smaller and more implicit representation.
A significant part of the Azeris are assimilated into the Iranian elites and are related to them due to the Shia Islamic faith. It should also be remembered that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself had partly Azeri descent through his father, who was an Azeri Shiite cleric, while the current president of Iran, Massoud Pezeskian, has dual Azeri and Kurdish descent.
Although Azeris would be more difficult to become the main spearhead of an ethnic insurgency, like the Kurds in the west and the Baluchis in the east, in conditions of significant regime challenge or collapse, pre-existing non-redemptive Azeri movements could rapidly strengthen.
Ethnic minorities are generally against the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty, but mostly lack confidence that any successor regime in Iran will honor commitments and not revert to an Iranian centralized nationalism. Also, ethnicities such as Azeris and Kurds, who are neighbors, often have tensions between them and coordination is not easy.
An important figure in the Azeri resistance is Hassan Shariatmandari, whose father, Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmandari, was tortured by Khomeini’s agents. “In the name of the father”, Shariatmandari ran an opposition campaign at first in partnership with Reza Pahlavi, before the latter reverted to Iranian nationalism and their relations cooled in 2022.
Why is Azeri liberationism awakening
If anyone “awakened” Ilham Aliyev, it was President Erdogan of Turkey who in 2020, as a guest in Baku, recited verses from a poem lamenting the division of Azeri between Iran and the Soviet Union. In 2022 it was Aliyev’s turn to mourn, at 9or Conference of the Organization of Turkic States, that 40 million Azeris living outside Azerbaijan are not able to speak their language. His statements were seen as an awakening of Azeri libertarianism in agreement with Erdogan.
Conspiracy theorists point to the “suspicious” nature of the 2024 crash of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter after a visit to Azerbaijan, which they read as the erosion of Azerbaijan by Iran’s enemies. In the past, Tehran has accused Baku of allowing Israeli agencies to operate from its territory. In any case, this plane crash has haunted Iran-Azerbaijan relations.
Why Azerbaijan is afraid of war with Iran
Azerbaijan has very serious reasons for not wanting to get involved in a war with Iran. First, the war will threaten to destabilize a country that was at peace only in 2025. Second, Azerbaijan has a key alliance with Turkey, which is also troubled by the destabilizing nature of the war for the wider region.
Turkey has pledged to provide military aid in the event Azerbaijan is attacked, so an involvement of the Caucasus country would bring the specter of an escalation of the war. Besides, the countries to the south of the Caucasus now form a comparatively narrow lane between the theater of war of Ukraine and that of Iran. Azerbaijan, finally, wishes to maintain its role as a supplier and transitor of energy for Turkey, the West and Israel.
However, Azerbaijan itself is considered to have an interest in a weakening of Iran, but not in an uncontrolled collapse. Azerbaijan’s identifying feature is that it is ethnically and linguistically Turkic, while being religiously Shiite. In this way, it receives “love attacks” and soft power from Turkey for the first reason and from Iran for the second.
The Azeris of Iran display their Shiite identity in the community and their Turkish identity at home. However, it is noteworthy that during the Pahlavi dynasty, there was greater linguistic and ethnological “racism” with comparisons between the sophisticated Farsi against the considered inferior Azeri language, while with the Islamic revolution the identifying element was transferred to the common Shiite religion.
Azerbaijan focuses on its energy policy towards Turkey, the West and Israel, while Iran is its most important trading partner. For Azerbaijan, a pro-Western turn of Iran, which would make it a double hub on the east-west and south-north axes, would be beneficial, but a complete destabilization or collapse, which would upset internal balances that have been hard-won after four and a half decades of independent life, would be disastrous.
