Unpredictability over whether the US will strike Iran is raising concerns for neighbouring Azerbaijan, but it has not discussed the issue with Washington, a senior government official told The National.
“The situation is not predictable and you will have difficulty to properly assess all of the threats and challenges that can emanate from that,” Hikmat Hajiyev, head of foreign policy affairs for Azerbaijan’s presidency, said in an interview in Baku.
Azerbaijan, an energy-rich country in the South Caucasus between Iran and Russia, feels like it is sandwiched between “two world wars”, said Mr Hajiyev.
“There is a Russia-Ukrainian war happening just over here, and also Iran and the Middle East, Israel and Iran confrontation and the United States’ involvement in that confrontation,” he said.
Fears of another US-Iran conflict grew on Wednesday as Washington renewed threats of military strikes on the regime. President Donald Trump said a “massive armada” in the shape of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was heading towards Iran and, in a reference to Venezuela, alluded to attempts to take out the country’s leadership. The US captured that country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, in a raid earlier this month.
“Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfil its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary,” Mr Trump wrote in a social media post.
Mr Trump appeared to row back on threats of military action over a violent crackdown on protests in Iran this month, in which at least 6,500 people were killed, according to human rights monitors based outside the country. He is now framing renewed threats as a means to pressure Iran into reaching a nuclear deal with the US.
In Baku, Mr Hajiyev said Azerbaijan had not raised its concerns with Washington.
“We are not discussing this issue with the United States and they have also never reached out to us for discussing such a subject matter,” he said.
Baku has not officially opposed US military intervention in Iran and tries to maintain a neutral position towards its southern neighbour.
Non-interference policy
Unlike countries in the Gulf, Azerbaijan has not said whether it would allow the US to use its airspace to attack Iran. The stakes for doing so could be high: Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran would consider any US military action “the start of war” and an “immediate and all-out” response would target “all those supporting the aggressor”.
Mr Hajiyev said Azerbaijani officials had spoken in recent days with their counterparts in Iran, but said the security situation in that country “is not subject to the immediate interference of the Azerbaijan side, as we always refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries”.
Other Azerbaijani allies such as Turkey, which also borders Iran, have publicly opposed US strikes, fearing it would feel the immediate effects of the fallout.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said “attacking Iran is wrong” and encouraged both Tehran and Washington to return to negotiations over a new nuclear deal that would put in place limits on the regime’s nuclear enrichment programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
'Nobody wants war'
Residents of areas of Azerbaijan neighbouring Iran say they are worried about potential instability so close to home.
In the village of Agali, 10km from the border, Kenan Nagiyev points to the mountains behind him.
“Iran is just right there. They are neighbours,” said Mr Nagiyev, an adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s special representative for the area.
“Of course, nobody wants war anywhere, especially in a neighbouring country, because there are also a lot of nice, good people just living their lives and bombing is not a good thing for humanity.”
Ties between Tehran and Baku have often been strained over Azerbaijan’s close military and economic ties with Israel, and suspicions by some in Tehran that Baku supports some nationalist Azerbaijanis’ desire to unify with ethnically similar parts of Iran.
At the same time, observers say there is no strong separatist intent among Iranian Azerbaijanis. “Separatist slogans or calls for secession from Iran have not been observed during past protests or at the current ones,” Bashir Kitachaev, an analyst specialising in the South Caucasus region, wrote for the Berlin-based Carnegie Russian Eurasia Centre.
Some Azerbaijani Iranians are well integrated in Iran: President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mr Khamenei are of Azerbaijani descent.
Many from the community, who make up around 15-20 per cent of Iran’s 90 million population, have been taking to the streets for the same reasons as other Iranians: economic strife and grievances over widespread social restrictions. They have criticised the ruling system but, unlike some other protesters, have not called for a restoration of Iran’s pre-1979 revolution monarchy. At that time, like other non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran, they faced persecution by the Shah, who aimed to minimise ethnic identities in the name of national unity.
Despite tension over Azerbaijan’s deep ties with Israel – Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited Baku this week – the country also attempts to manage its relationship with Tehran.
Trade volume in 2024 was $650 million, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said last year.
At Aghband, right on the Iranian border, construction work is under way for a new border crossing point across the Aras river, amid blue, snow-capped mountains.
On the other side of the water in Iran, open-top trucks move around piles of earth and in Azerbaijan, diggers prepare the ground for laying a road. Half of the newly laid bridge is in Iran and half in Azerbaijan.
Jeyhun Yusifov, head of the technical department at Azerbaijan's state roads agency, said he believed the new crossing point would help to improve relations between the countries. The freight and passenger crossing is scheduled to open this year, he said, as he pointed out building work on a customs complex.
“Increasing the number of crossing points eases each point’s passing capacity,” he said. “They won’t have to go so far to cross.”
