Azerbaijan, the only transit country bordering both Russia and Iran, has gained new importance for Europe and the wider West because of its geography, energy routes, and growing role in transport between Europe and Asia, according to Polish Caucasus expert Wojciech Górecki.
The latest tensions flared after Azerbaijan’s State Security Service said on March 6 that it had foiled terrorist attacks allegedly prepared by agents of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
A day earlier, Azerbaijani officials said Iranian drones had struck a school and the airport in Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory.
Górecki, a senior analyst for Turkey, the South Caucasus and Central Asia at the Warsaw think-tank Centre for Eastern Studies, said the attack amounted to a warning from Tehran.
He said Iran was signaling that Baku should stay out of the war and avoid cooperation with Iran’s enemies.
He argued that Azerbaijan’s position had become especially important during the war in Ukraine and the current conflict centering on Iran.
Together with Georgia, Azerbaijan forms part of what is often called the Caucasus corridor, a narrow transit zone between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea through which major transport routes run.
That corridor now carries a large share of air traffic between Europe and Asia. European airlines can no longer fly over Russia, and many are also avoiding airspace farther south.
Górecki said Azerbaijan also matters as an energy supplier and transit state.
Several major pipelines bypassing Russia run through the country, including the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and the South Caucasus gas pipeline, also known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.
These routes carry Caspian oil and gas westward through Georgia and Turkey.
He said the volumes involved are not large enough to replace supplies from the Persian Gulf for the whole European Union, but they remain very important for smaller markets in southern Europe.
Despite cultural and religious affinity with Iran, relations between Baku and Tehran remain tense.
Azerbaijan is a Muslim-majority country, and Iran is home to a large ethnic Azerbaijani population, estimated to be bigger than the population of Azerbaijan itself.
Even so, Baku has developed close economic and military links with Western allies, including Israel, from which it buys weapons, a relationship that irritates Tehran.
“Azerbaijan wants to trade with everyone, but it does not enter into close alliances with anyone except Turkey, and perhaps Pakistan,” Górecki said.
He added that Baku has shown little interest in joining either the European Union or the Eurasian Economic Union, the Moscow-led trade bloc.
He also pointed to the wider geopolitical importance of Nakhchivan.
The airport hit in the drone strike lies near a planned transit route known as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), announced in Washington in January by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.
The project is intended to link Azerbaijan proper with Nakhchivan through southern Armenia and form part of a larger Europe-Asia transport chain.
Under the plan, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to move forward on the route provided it is operated by an Armenian-American company.
According to Górecki, the prospect of a stronger American presence in the South Caucasus is unwelcome in both Tehran and Moscow.
But he said Russia currently lacks the means to shape events in Azerbaijan as it once did, and Baku is taking advantage of that.
He pointed to Azerbaijan’s 2023 restoration of full control over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but long held by Armenian separatists.
Russian peacekeepers, who had been expected to stay there until late 2025, were forced out early.
Górecki said Moscow can no longer rely on so-called frozen conflicts, long-running unresolved territorial disputes, as a tool for influence in Azerbaijan.
He noted that Armenia and Azerbaijan initialed a peace agreement in Washington on August 8 last year, in the presence of US President Donald Trump, after decades of conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute in Washington made a similar point in a March 7 post on X, saying US policymakers had recognized Azerbaijan’s importance years ago.
In the 2017 US National Security Strategy, Azerbaijan was described as the only country bordering both Russia and Iran while trying to maintain its independence, making it a key transit state.
Coffey noted that one of the three main overland trade routes between Asia and Europe runs through Azerbaijan. The other two pass through Russia and Iran.
He added that digital infrastructure and major transport links also pass through the country, including fiber-optic connections and part of the E60, one of Europe’s longest road routes, which stretches from France to Kyrgyzstan, near the Chinese border.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP