Few countries in Eurasia have been forced to simultaneously balance Russian pressure, Iranian suspicion, a strategic partnership with Turkey and European energy interests. Azerbaijan is one of them.
By Marjana DODA
In today’s international context, where there is increasing talk of a multipolar world with major power centers such as the United States, China and Russia, the role of middle-sized countries is often underestimated. However, Azerbaijan is one of those cases where geography and energy have transformed it into a significant actor that goes beyond its size.
This rise is related not only to Baku’s pragmatic foreign policy, but also to its considerable energy resources and strategic geographical position. Its importance has increased especially after the European energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, when alternative gas supply corridors gained new strategic weight. In this context, projects such as the Southern Gas Corridor pipeline, along with its TANAP and TAP segments, have made Azerbaijan an important link in Europe’s energy diversification efforts.
Although it is not often seen as a “coveted” territory to the same extent as other global regions, the fact that Azerbaijan is located between powers such as Iran and Russia shows that it has managed to survive their influence and pressure, while maintaining a significant degree of strategic autonomy.
Through diplomatic balancing, energy cooperation, and a role in Eurasian trade corridors, Azerbaijan is trying to consolidate itself as a significant actor in the new regional geopolitical architecture.
Azerbaijan is located at one of the most congested geopolitical crossroads of Eurasia. Small in size but with considerable strategic weight, it is located at the point where rival regional orders overlap.
Over the past two decades, Azerbaijan has developed a distinctive response to this challenge through what is often called “multi-vector diplomacy,” a strategy that aims to engage with rival powers in parallel, deepening relationships where it is beneficial, and avoiding strategic dependencies where they become dangerous.
Today, this strategy is facing its greatest pressure since the country’s independence.
The Iran-Israel standoff is intensifying. Russia is recalibrating its position after the war in Ukraine. The Middle East remains volatile, while the West’s attention is fragmented by multiple crises. Yet paradoxically, the more volatile the region becomes, the more important Azerbaijan’s balancing model seems.
A State on the Edge of Geopolitical Systems
Azerbaijan’s foreign policy cannot be understood without considering its geography. It is at once an energy producer in the Caspian, a power in the South Caucasus, and a transit state connecting Europe with Asia.
To the north lies Russia, still the most influential actor in the security architecture of the South Caucasus. Although Moscow’s attention has focused on Ukraine, its influence on regional security and transport networks remains profound.
To the south lies Iran, a neighbor with long-standing historical and cultural ties but increasingly tense political relations. These tensions have been exacerbated by Azerbaijan’s close relations with Turkey and particularly its growing cooperation with the United States and Israel, which Tehran perceives through an increasingly sensitive security prism.
To the west lies Turkey, Azerbaijan’s closest strategic partner. After the Karabakh war in 2020, this relationship has shifted from cultural proximity to a structured security alliance, becoming the main pillar of Baku’s external balance. The Shusha Declaration is a landmark agreement on allied relations signed between Azerbaijan and Türkiye on June 15, 2021. It elevates the two countries’ strategic partnership to a formal alliance, committing them to joint military cooperation, mutual defense assistance, and close integration in the defense industry.
As for mutual defense, the declaration, which was ratified by both parliaments and has the force of law, stipulates that in the event of a threat or act of aggression by a third state against the independence, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of either country, both nations will hold joint consultations and provide necessary mutual assistance.
Further afield, the European Union and the United States appear primarily as economic and energy actors, with a strong interest in diversifying supplies, but with a limited role in the regional security architecture. In these conditions, a complete alignment with a single bloc would create dangerous dependence. Although Baku is in talks with the United States and some EU capitals on possible cooperation in security and military areas.
For this reason, Azerbaijan has built a strategy of flexibility: it cooperates in parallel with actors who are often in tension with each other, without becoming a direct part of their conflicts.
This position places the country in a space where the boundaries between security, energy and politics are blurred. On the one hand, it is located next to an Iran that is increasingly tense in relation to the West and Israel; on the other hand, it is part of an energy corridor that supplies Europe and that has taken on even greater importance after the recent global energy crises.
In this sense, Azerbaijan is not simply a gas exporter or a post-Soviet state in transition, but a point of equilibrium in a regional system characterized by persistent uncertainty.
This interdependence between constraints and opportunities shapes the way Azerbaijan positions itself towards each of the actors that define its strategic environment.
Turkey: The Anchor Relationship
Among Azerbaijan’s foreign partnerships, none is more structurally important than Turkey.
This relationship is not simply diplomatic. It is military, strategic, economic, cultural and increasingly institutional.
Joint military exercises, defense coordination, and growing political integration have made the partnership a cornerstone of Azerbaijan’s security doctrine.
Turkey’s political and diplomatic support during the 2020 Karabakh war was crucial. It changed regional perceptions of the balance of power and strengthened Ankara’s role as Baku’s main strategic guarantor. As with a number of other countries Azerbaijan has also benefited from technical assistance and armament supply of Türkiye based on commercial terms.
Unlike other foreign policy vectors, this relationship does not balance in the same way with rival poles. It functions as a stabilizing anchor for the entire system.
Even the most flexible balancing strategy needs at least one most reliable partner.
For Azerbaijan, that partner is Turkey.
Russia: Pragmatism under Limitation
Relations with Russia are more complex.
Moscow remains too important to ignore, but also too historically intrusive to be fully trusted.
Azerbaijan’s approach is therefore characterized by managed pragmatism: avoiding direct confrontation but also resisting strategic dependence.
Trade, transport corridors, and regional security coordination continue, despite broader geopolitical uncertainties. Yet beneath the surface, there is a mutual caution.
Russia sees the South Caucasus as part of its traditional sphere of influence. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, looks equal partnership with Russia based on mutual interests and respect for sovereignty.
Both countries are doing much better in economic and cultural exchange rather than political one. Baku strives to maintain good-neighborly relations with all of its neighbors, including Russia.
Iran: Geography and Suspicion
If Turkey represents Azerbaijan’s strongest external partner, Iran periodically may represent its delicate neighborhood challenge.
The two countries share a long border, deep historical ties, and considerable ethnic and cultural overlap. However, modern relations are characterized more by strategic distrust than by closeness.
Tehran’s concerns are clear: Azerbaijan’s close ties with Israel, its expanding alliance with Turkey, and the possibility of growing foreign influence near Iran’s northern border. Iranian officials have also viewed the gradual Azerbaijan–U.S. rapprochement during the Trump administration with increasing suspicion. From Tehran’s perspective, initiatives such as the proposed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) corridor project were not merely economic or transport initiatives, but part of a broader geopolitical shift that could facilitate a longer-term American strategic presence in the South Caucasus, directly along Iran’s northern frontier. Iranian analysts increasingly interpreted closer U.S.–Azerbaijan cooperation, combined with Turkey’s growing regional role and Israel’s strong security ties with Baku — as a development that could reduce Iran’s traditional influence in the region and strengthen the presence of rival powers near its borders.
Baku, on the other hand, remains wary of Iranian political pressure, border tensions, and periodic coercive signals.
The result is a relationship dictated by necessity, not trust.
Geography forces engagement. Politics limits trust.
As Iran–Israel tensions intensify, this dynamic becomes even more fragile. Azerbaijan’s foreign partnerships are increasingly interpreted by Tehran through a security prism, increasing the risk of miscalculation.
Israel and the West: Capability Without Alignment
Azerbaijan’s relationship with Israel is among its most strategically important and politically sensitive partnerships.
Cooperation in military technology, intelligence, and energy has strengthened Azerbaijan’s defense capabilities and broadened its strategic options.
But every benefit carries a geopolitical cost.
From Tehran’s perspective, Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel pose a security challenge near Iran’s northern border. What Baku sees as pragmatic capacity-building, Iran increasingly interprets as strategic encirclement.
Relations with the European Union and the United States are more economic than military, focused primarily on energy exports, infrastructure links, and regional stability.
These relationships matter. But, unlike the partnership with Turkey, they do not form the core of Azerbaijan’s security architecture.
Azerbaijan as a manager of uncertainty
Azerbaijan can be understood as a state operating within a space where uncertainty is the normal state of the system, while stability appears more as a temporary result of external balances than as a sustainable reality. As President Ilham Aliyev suggests, stability in the Caucasus is not a given, but a continuous process of adaptation to changing circumstances.
In this context, Baku’s policy does not aim at regional dominance, but at maintaining a functional balance between external pressures and internal needs. This positions Azerbaijan as a balancing actor operating on the borders of several spheres of influence simultaneously.
However, this role carries a clear paradox: the more Azerbaijan’s importance in the energy and strategic infrastructure of the wider region increases, the greater its exposure to tensions and competition among surrounding powers. In this way, its function in the South Caucasus becomes a constant exercise in managing pressures, where the line between stability and crisis remains thin and fluid.
Middle-sized states rarely have the luxury of irreversible choices in foreign policy. They are forced to move between larger powers, taking advantage of the spaces that are created between them, but without becoming dependent on either. As geopolitical competition in Eurasia and the Middle East intensifies, this room for maneuver becomes increasingly limited.
In this context, the experience of Azerbaijan remains a significant example of how states in sensitive geopolitical areas try to maintain autonomy in an increasingly competitive system. However, despite regional challenges, its strategic position and economic development make it an important actor in the wider Eurasian region.
© 2026 Argumentum
