Could Azerbaijan mediate between Israel and Iran?

Baku is still grappling over its own peace agreement, but is positioning itself as a mediating power

There are few synagogues in the world that draw visitors from Iran. But at the Synagogue of the Ashkenazi Jews in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, it is quite common for an Iranian tourist to wander through the door. Azerbaijan is the only Muslim-majority nation in the world to maintain close ties with Tel Aviv, a friendship rooted in its indigenous Jewish population, which numbers more than 7,000 people based mostly in Baku as well as an ancient community of Mountain Jews whose roots stretch back to the Persian Empire. Azerbaijan’s relations with its neighbour, Iran, have been more strained in recent years over issues including Tehran’s mistreatment of Iran’s Azeri minority, and its relationship with Armenia, Azerbaijan’s biggest foe. But Baku’s recent military victory in Nagorno Karabakh has reshuffled the geopolitical cards in the Caucasus, and its relations with Tehran have warmed. Pezeshkian’s state visit to Baku in late April put the presidential seal on the rebooted friendship.

As a result of Baku’s middle way, Shneor Segal, the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi Jews in Azerbaijan, hosts plenty of visitors curious to see this geopolitical anomaly - a lively and open Jewish community in a Muslim-majority country. I met the Rabbi in 2023, just before Hamas’s October 7 massacres and the outrages that followed, under the cool, high dome of the synagogue’s main room, where he was arranging chairs for prayers the next day. As we spoke about the special relationship (Segal is from Israel, was posted to Baku a decade ago and has since taken Azerbaijani citizenship), a young man wandered in alone, and gazed around. The Rabbi introduced himself.

‘I’m from Pakistan,’ the visitor replied. ‘And I’ve never had a chance to see a synagogue before.’

Azerbaijan and Israel have more recently bolstered this bond with some controversial trade. Baku was the second biggest buyer of Israeli weapons between 2018 and 2022 (after India), including Iron Dome which it purchased in 2021. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan continues to supply Israel with some 3 million tonnes of oil per year, defying pressure from pro-Palestine activists and an embargo by Turkey, whose territory the Azeri pipeline traverses before being dispatched from the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. (I wrote about Erdoğan’s oil-to-Israel problem in Foreign Policy earlier this year.)

Azerbaijan’s response to Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran was, unsurprisingly, far more measured than many of its neighbours. Baku avoided direct condemnation of Israel, instead expressing only ‘serious concern’ over its strikes, strongly condemning the ‘escalation of the situation’ and calling on the two sides to solve their differences ‘only through dialogue and diplomatic means’. It also opened a corridor for foreign nationals to leave Iran, transferring them from the border to Baku airport to fly back to their home countries; by Tuesday, it had evacuated more than 600 people from 17 countries.

Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia initially seemed to be mediating by passing a message from Iran to Trump, to be forwarded to Israel, asking for an immediate ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. But Israel’s onslaught on Gaza has undermined the already fragile trust between Tel Aviv and its tentative Arab allies, and that attempt proved fruitless. Azerbaijan’s unique position means it could provide an alternative backchannel that cuts out Trump. Baku is already mediating between Turkey and Israel to avert clashes between their armed forces inside post-Assad Syria, and Israel is likely to see Azerbaijan as a more neutral interlocutor than Qatar or Egypt, its go-to mediators with the Palestinians. Aliyev has also shown that he can act independently of Erdoğan, something that previously worried Iran. Meanwhile, relations between Tehran and and Baku have strengthened since Azerbaijan seized full control of Nagorno Karabakh in September, offering the prospect of new transport and links: Pezeshkian signed an economic memorandum of understanding with Aliyev in April.

But if Azerbaijan were to become a broker between Iran and Israel, the question then is, what would Azerbaijan want in return? International respectability is definitely important to Baku, which is trying to polish its problematic records on human rights, corruption and autocracy. It is, on paper, still at war itself, having not yet signed its draft peace agreement with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh. Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan is negotiating from a position of weakness, having lost the patronage of Russia, and the support of his people over Karabakh. Azerbaijan, if it feels empowered, may yet want more territory, this time from Armenia proper, in order to complete a land corridor running from Baku to the Azerbaijan exclave Nakhchivan. If Baku moves to snatch Armenian territory, playing a key role in Israel-Iran negotiations at the same time could help shield it from international opprobrium.

Erdoğan has led by example on this, offering up Turkey’s mediating capabilities to host simultaneous Ukraine-Russia and NATO summits last month, even as the opposition mayor of Istanbul, who was arrested in late March, languished in prison. International headlines focused on Erdoğan’s status as a peacemaker rather than his flagrant move to eliminate his biggest rival, and Europe and America’s diplomatic response was muted. Erdoğan is angling for a mediating role again in this conflict, embarking on a phone marathon with regional leaders and Trump over the weekend as the war erupted. Earlier this month he spoke of Turkey becoming ‘a hub of peace diplomacy’, but this week he also said that Iran has a natural, legitimate and lawful right to defend itself against Israel, even as he offered himself to Trump as a ‘facilitator’ for negotiations.

Don’t rule Azerbaijan, Turkey or other middle powers out - even if their own records on conflict are tarnished. Parties in conflicts no longer trust the UN, neutral Europe or America to mediate, and the way is open for smaller countries with the right connections to step in. (It helps that neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan are signatories to the Rome Statute, meaning fewer worries for Putin or Netanyahu, both of whom have been served arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court.) It’s interesting that Nikos Christodoulides, president of the Republic of Cyprus, a major adversary of Turkey, claimed over the weekend that he was acting as an intermediary between Tehran and Tel Aviv - although Iran didn’t seem to have got the memo.

There are also opportunities in adversity. In 2021, at the height of tensions at sea between Turkey and Greece, a retired Turkish naval commander (and staunch proponent of Erdoğan’s Mavi Vatan, or Blue Homeland doctrine for Turkish sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean), suggested that the UK, now that it was outside the EU, could be the mediator in the Aegean.

This week I have been drinking…

… the new summer menu at Fahri Konsolus, hands down the best cocktail bar in Istanbul. Drinking it slowly, that is, because these flavour bombs, made with impeccably-sourced and creatively mixed ingredients, pack a boozy punch. The Gül-i Bâr, infused with roses imported from Iran, is my favourite - and lets me end on a happier story from Turkey’s neighbouring country.