Azerbaijan: Israel's discreet friend | Looking at the Middle East

While many Muslim-majority states have sentenced Israel for the conduct of its war in Gaza, Azerbaijan stands out for its relative calm.

Baku, which will soon attract more global attention as it prepares to host Cop29 in November, has long maintained closer ties with Israel than many of its close neighbors. In recent years, the friendship has grown further.

Israel is now in the lead destination for Azeri crude oil, while the key weapons for Bakus' victory in 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War was provided by Israel.

But the ties are not motivated solely by material benefits, and shared geopolitical concerns, particularly regarding Iran, further strain relations.

Israel refers to Azerbaijan as “strategic partner“, maintaining close historical ties. When Azerbaijan declared its independence in 1991, Israel was one of the first states to recognize the new state. A small Jewish community in Azerbaijan, between 7,000 and 16,000 people, provides a cultural link, but the political relationship has been the priority.

Benjamin Netanyahu became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Azerbaijan, in 1997, and since then, trade and security cooperation has intensified. By the mid-2000s, Azerbaijan had become Israel fifth largest trading partner, with oil headed to the Eastern Mediterranean and weapons and other military materiel headed to the Caspian Sea.

Today, Azerbaijan, alongside Kazakhstan, provides 60 percentcrude oil that Israel uses.

No criticism of Israel

Israel believes that having a Muslim-majority state as a partner could reduce its diplomatic isolation in the Muslim world. This has been particularly pronounced since the start of the war in Gaza.

While most Muslim-majority states have voiced their criticism, the government of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has been surprisingly silent. Aliyev met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February, and there has been no wave of public criticism of Israel since the Gaza war began.

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Journalist and analyst based in Baku, Rovshan Mammadlieven reports a de facto ban on protests against Israel by Aliyev's authoritarian government.

Baku is not indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians. It recognizes Palestine and hosts a Palestinian embassy. He has been a strong supporter of the two-state solution and, since the start of the war, has supported UN resolutions calling for ceasefire.

But Bakus's line was deliberately balanced: expressing sympathy for the Palestinians without excessively criticizing Israel.

For Baku, Gaza remains behind more immediate concerns, for which Israel has proven a useful ally.

The first is the conflict with neighboring Armenia. After providing Baku with key weapons to defeat Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Israel has since deepened its military partnership with Azerbaijan. Intelligence sharing between the two states has increased, while Israel has provided drone technology. Israeli companies have also rushed to invest in the reconstruction of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Israel's support in the 2020 war was linked to Azerbaijan's second immediate concern: its southern neighbor Iran.

Tehran has supported Armenia in its decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan, despite it being a Christian-majority state fighting a Muslim-majority state. This has contributed to the freezing of relations between Tehran and Baku and partly explains why Aliyev is happy to forge ties with Iran's long-time rival Israel.

Mutual hostility has even seen Iran support Islamist groups in Azerbaijan and Baku encourage Iranian Azeris to push for separatism. without much success.

It's pretty quiet support For some Kurdish groups in Iraq, Israel sees value in supporting strong anti-Tehran forces on the Iranian border.

'New chapter'

That said, Armenia's defeats in 2020 and the collapse of Armenia's Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 have somewhat changed Tehran's calculations. Immediately after the war, he mobilized troops along the Caucasus border as a way to deter Azerbaijan from pushing deeper into Armenia to connect with its non-contiguous province, Nakhichevan.

Since then, Tehran has adopted less aggressive methods: reaching a deal agreement last year to allow Azerbaijan to access Nakhchivan via Iranian territory, in order to temper its ambitions to conquer the Armenian “Zanguezur corridor”.

They also approved the possibility of a new rail connection between Russia and India, via Iranian and Azerbaijani territory, while officials spoke of a “new chapter“in Baku-Tehran relations.

It may not erase decades of tensions between the two neighbors, nor prompt Baku to end its ties with Israel. However, Tehran may hope that if Baku feels less threatened by Iran, it will gradually ease its ties with Israel.

A more immediate source of tension in Israeli-Azerbaijani relations, however, concerns Turkey. Much more than Israel, Turkey is Azerbaijan's closest ally. Aliyev's father and predecessor as president even described the relationship with his Turkish brothers as follows: one nation, two states.

In 2020, Ankara provided key weapons, although to a lesser extent than Israel, but also helped form The Azerbaijani army provided Syrian militiamen to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh. Unlike Aliyev, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sharply criticized Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza. Israel and Turkey recalled their diplomats, while Erdogan separated some. commercial agreements.

The American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin speculates that Erdogan's anger at Israel may ultimately “loss“Azerbaijani-Israeli relations, with Turkish president demanding his ally respond more forcefully over Gaza.

However, while this is a possibility given Ankara's importance to Baku, Israeli-Azerbaijani ties are now deep and historic and Azerbaijan would be reluctant to give them up, even in the face of Turkish pressure.

Baku is likely hoping that the Gaza conflict will be resolved before such pressure from Ankara arises, allowing it to continue its close and quiet relations with Israel under less scrutiny.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of Middle East Eye.