Recent signals indicate a high commitment to new rules of engagement as leaders in Baku and Tehran increasingly agree on accommodating differences while banking on strategic opportunities from regional partnership. Azerbaijan may soon restore its embassy in Tehran which was closed after the January 2023 terror attack as Iran agreed to take measures expected by Baku. On March 6, in a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahiansaid the two neighbours opened “a new chapter” in bilateral relations with many prospects for cooperation.
Action followed words. On March 15, Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov was in Tehran for talks on energy cooperation. Recently, the Iranian side declared that preparations for the project that aims to connect and synchronize the power grids of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran are at the final stage. It will be part of the broader trilateral partnership on north-south connectivity which gained momentum after Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022. A new bridge and checkpoint were opened on the Azerbaijan-Iran border in December 2023 to expand the transit capacity of this route.
In May 2023, Russia and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding for the completion of the Rasht-Astara railway, the major bottleneck in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) linking Russia to India through Azerbaijan and Iran. A viable rail route, which is very unlikely under current circumstances because of sanctions on Russia and Iran, not only bolsters Azerbaijan’s geoeconomic importance for different power centers but also endows it with strategic tools to tame Russian and Iranian assertiveness in the region.
To the surprise of many, the Azerbaijan-Iran amity is on display in military and cultural spheres, too, the most securitized aspects of bilateral ties in the last few years. On May 3, the deputy defense minister of Azerbaijan, Colonel-General Karam Mustafayev met Iran’s first deputy chief of staff, Major General Aziz Nasirzadeh in Tehran to discuss prospects of defense cooperation. What makes the visit highly significant is its timing on the heels of the recent blow-for-blow clash between Iran and Israel, Azerbaijan’s major strategic partner in the Middle East. With red lines crossed in Iran-Israel tensions, Baku deems it necessary to coordinate moves with all involved parties to prevent any spillover to the South Caucasus. Trying to avoid an all-out war with Israel and the United States, Tehran, on its part, has been measured in its reaction to the events, including its engagement with the neighbouring countries.
During his visit to attend the 6th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in Azerbaijan on May 1, Iran’s Minister of Culture Mehdi Esmaeili declared that the two countries started a joint cinematic project about the life of 12th-century poet Nizami Ganjavi, a long-time bone of contention between Azerbaijanis and Iranians who claim the poet as one of their own. Shifting the focus to the shared cultural past and presenting figures like Nizami as a bridge between the two nations may mitigate the identity aspects of the interstate tensions which came to a head during the fall of 2021 and 2022.
What makes the recent thaw in Azerbaijan-Iran ties more significant is that it has been taking shape against the backdrop of increasing uncertainty in the neighbourhood. The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Iran’s indirect involvement in the war through its “axis of resistance” proxies, and Israel’s diverting its focus to its immediate vicinity put Azerbaijan into a difficult spot. It got worse when the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1 triggered an exchange of direct attacks between the two countries, creating a highly unpredictable environment for neighbouring countries including Azerbaijan. Although Azerbaijani-Iranian normalization seems to have passed this stress test, evolving security dynamics in the South Caucasus and the Middle East will put further strain on this process which, if not carefully dealt with, could easily put the sides back on a collision course.
Firstly, the issue of the Zangezur Corridor that envisages seamless Azerbaijani access to its Nakhchivan exclave through Southern Armenia and which Iran views as its red line in relations with Azerbaijan may soon resurface in the Armenia-Azerbaijan talks. After the recent bilateral agreement on the return of four border villages to Azerbaijan and the launch of the demarcation process, Baku may now pressure Yerevan into fulfilling its commitment under the November 10, 2020 trilateral ceasefire statement to provide a corridor to Nakhchivan. In the late 2023, Azerbaijan reformulated its proposal, opting for the Kaliningrad Model for the Zangezur Corridor to assuage Armenian and Iranian fears about the full extra-territoriality of the route. Baku also agreed with Tehran to build the so-called Araz Corridor, an alternative to the Zangezur Corridor project, without wholly abandoning the latter though. As Russia’s position declines in the South Caucasus in general and in Armenia in particular, and external powers increasingly fill the vacuum, the Zangezur Corridor will be further securitized by Armenia and Azerbaijan on the one hand, and involved parties on the other, putting serious pressure on Azerbaijan-Iran ties.
Secondly, even if a new balance of power, or as some experts call it, a balance of threat emerged between Iran and Israel after mutual attacks in April, the two adversaries are now operating in totally new power realities with large room for miscalculation. With recent attacks on Israel and the U.S. forces by the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance, the war seems to be returning to the shadows. However, red lines have already been crossed, and the ensuing arms race to keep the balance may create a situation prone to escalation. This strategic uncertainty puts additional pressure on the Azerbaijan-Iran ties as they are on the opposite sides of regional alignments.
The unpredictability emanating from Iran’s increasingly militarised foreign policy as the foreign ministry is either sidelined from key decision-making or relegated to the status of a mouthpiece of the IRGC also poses serious obstacles to cementing the ‘new normal’ in Azerbaijan-Iran relations. It has already happened on different occasions that after the Iranian foreign ministry declared new deals with Azerbaijan, Iran’s ambassador to Armenia Mehdi Sobhani who was a former ambassador to Syria and IRGC Quds Force affiliate, took to social media to sabotage the process.
With all these ups and downs, Azerbaijan-Iran relations are back to normal. But it is one thing to put regional competition on pragmatic rails in a turbulent neighborhood but quite another to sustain its durability for a long time.
Mahammad Mammadov
