PSCRP-BESA Reports No 233 (September 27, 2026)

Iran is becoming increasingly isolated. Under pressure from the United States, countries that for years had maintained a relatively neutral stance are beginning to sever their remaining ties with the Islamic Republic. The latest development has been the suspension of air links with Iran. As U.S. sanctions against Tehran expand, more countries are closing their airspace to aircraft operated by Iranian airlines. The process began with the UAE and Iraq, but it has not stopped there.

The main external factor behind the current aviation restrictions is the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions package of September 8, 2026, which targeted 36 individuals and entities linked to Iran’s aviation sector, including Iranian airlines and the companies that service them. Washington has also warned foreign businesses about the risk of secondary sanctions.

On September 22, Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) announced that flights by Iranian carriers to Azerbaijan would be suspended from that date. The airline said the decision was linked to the new U.S. sanctions package against Iran, particularly the restrictions affecting the aviation sector. Iran Air initially said that it had received no notification, but Azerbaijani authorities later confirmed that the flights would remain suspended until further notice.

Georgia’s Civil Aviation Agency also announced that it would comply with the sanctions regime. Five of the 27 Iranian airlines targeted by the U.S. Treasury sanctions operate flights to Georgia. They will no longer be permitted to serve those routes.

Although the government of Turkmenistan has made no official statement on the issue, a Tehran-Dushanbe flight that had been due to cross Turkmen airspace was forced to return to the Iranian capital. The Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic said the pilots learned only after takeoff that Turkmen authorities had closed their airspace to Iranian aircraft. They attempted to reroute through Azerbaijan, but permission was denied there as well. The aircraft ultimately turned back.

The broader picture is that the South Caucasus and Central Asia are increasingly isolating Iran due to U.S. sanctions. Tehran appears to have largely lost its ability to persuade neighboring countries to maintain relations with it, whether by appealing to mutual economic interests or by resorting to threats. Iran’s setbacks in the 2025 war with Israel and the 2026 war with Israel and the United States exposed weaknesses in its military capabilities. At the same time, irrational and aggressive actions by the Iranian authorities, including strikes on Azerbaijani and Turkish territory without justification, have further undermined the argument that maintaining close ties with Tehran can help neighboring states avoid security problems. Recent decisions by Georgia, Azerbaijan and, apparently, Turkmenistan show a growing willingness to align with U.S.-led financial and economic pressure on the Iranian government.

There are, however, exceptions. Armenia continues to cooperate with Iran and is even entering into new agreements with Tehran. On September 14, Armenia and Iran signed a protocol establishing a “facilitated customs corridor,” effectively easing the movement of freight between the two countries. Passenger traffic between Armenia and Iran also continued in late September.

Ten days later, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The two discussed strengthening bilateral relations. Pashinyan expressed satisfaction with the development of Armenian-Iranian cooperation and noted that joint programs were being implemented across a range of sectors.
At almost the same time, Armenian National Assembly Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan received Iran’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yerevan, Khalil Shirgholami.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed the development of Armenian-Iranian relations and ways to deepen cooperation in a number of areas. They also considered opportunities to expand interparliamentary ties and exchanged views on regional issues.

Meanwhile, Armenian Ambassador to Iran Grigor Hakobyan called for broader cooperation between Yerevan and Tehran in the railway and trade sectors. Hakobyan discussed prospects for expanding rail links with Iran’s Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development and CEO of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways, Jabbar Ali Zakeri. The two sides reviewed the state of railway infrastructure in both countries and discussed opportunities to expand regional transport and economic links. One of the principal projects under consideration is the construction of a railway connecting the two countries through Armenia’s Syunik Province. For Iran, the project has particular strategic significance: the proposed route would cut across the planned TRIPP transport corridor, an initiative pushed by President Trump that Tehran strongly opposes.

More recently, during a visit to Iran, Chairman of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee Eduard Hakobyan met Iran’s Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance and head of the country’s customs administration, Foroud Asgari. The two signed a protocol establishing an exchange of advance information on goods and vehicles moving through Armenian and Iranian territory under the framework of the “Facilitated Customs Corridor.”

Armenia therefore remains one of the few countries bordering Iran where Tehran’s pressure and incentives still appear to retain some influence. Yerevan continues to expand its cooperation with the Islamic Republic, although it is unclear how long Armenia will be able to move against the broader regional trend. At some point, Yerevan’s potential role in helping Iran circumvent sanctions may find its way onto the agenda in the White House and on Capitol Hill. If that happens, the question will ultimately be put directly to the Armenian authorities.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 227 (August 31, 2026)

1. Introduction

In mid-August 2026, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref met in Tehran with Tajikistan’s Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Daler Juma. The substance of the meeting was unglamorous: oil bitumen and petrochemical exports, aviation fuel, a joint energy commission, and a first half of 2026 in which bilateral trade already ran some 15 percent ahead of the same period in 2025. Only after working through this ledger did Aref turn to something else — a proposal, in his words, to build on the “extensive cultural, civilizational, and linguistic commonalities” between the two countries by establishing a “Union of Persian-Speaking Countries and Regions,” and to pursue the idea “seriously” through further meetings and visits. (IRNA, 2026; Mehr News Agency, 2026)

It is worth being precise about what did, and did not, occur. No union was announced. Tajikistan did not agree to join one. No institution, charter, or secretariat exists. What exists is a proposal, advanced by a senior Iranian official and appended to a routine bilateral economic meeting — and, as this article will show, not for the first time.

That sequencing is itself significant. The cultural proposal did not occasion the meeting; the meeting created an opening for the cultural proposal. Understood this way, Aref’s remarks appear less as the launch of a coherent geopolitical project than as a rhetorical addition to an unrelated transaction — low-cost, low-commitment, and revealing precisely because it cost Tehran nothing to voice. The question this article poses is therefore not whether such a union will come into being; in any binding institutional form, it almost certainly will not. The more interesting question is why Iranian officials continue to reach for this particular idea, and what its persistent, low-cost recurrence suggests about a strategic problem Tehran has not yet resolved.

2. The Arithmetic of a Narrow Proposal

Taken at face value — a union defined by the Persian language — the arithmetic of Aref’s proposal is unforgiving. Its core membership would consist of Iran, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. Iran remains a significant regional power, but one degraded by war, sanctions, and domestic economic strain. Tajikistan is culturally central to any Persian project yet lacks the economic or political weight to anchor one. Afghanistan has a large Dari-speaking population, but its government — the Taliban — has maintained a historically difficult, at times openly hostile, relationship with Tehran. Set against the Organization of Turkic States, which already links Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan through transport corridors, coordinated diplomacy, and a growing institutional apparatus, a purely linguistic Persian union resembles a three-member club, two of whose members can scarcely sustain it.

Nor is the idea new. In February 2024, at a “Night of Iranian-Tajik Cultural Heritage” held at Niavaran Palace in Tehran, Ali Darabi — then deputy minister of Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts — advanced substantially the same proposal: a union of Persian-speaking countries, grounded in shared language, culture, and civilization. Darabi went further than Aref would two years later. Addressing Tajikistan’s deputy culture minister and ambassador, he described Tajikistan as pāre-ye tan-e Irān — “a torn-off piece of Iran’s body.” (ISNA, 2024; Mehr News Agency, 2024)

The phrase merits close attention. It is not a claim about shared literature or festivals; it is a claim about territory and belonging, voiced by a sitting Iranian official at a state-adjacent cultural occasion. It illustrates a structural tendency built into the linguistic framing of a “Persian union”: once the operative criterion becomes ancestry and language rather than shared heritage, the logic drifts toward irredentism — and toward precisely the kind of claim likely to alarm Dushanbe, Tashkent, and Baku rather than draw them closer.

The difficulty with Aref’s proposal, then, is not only its narrowness. It is that its underlying logic points in a genuinely destabilizing direction.

3. The Persianate Alternative

There is an alternative available, and Iranian officials have gestured toward it without ever quite naming it. Scholars of the region have long used a different concept for a different kind of space: the Persianate world. First articulated by the historian Marshall Hodgson and subsequently elaborated by scholars such as Nile Green and Richard Eaton, the term does not describe where Persian is spoken today. It describes the far larger zone in which, for centuries, Persian functioned as a language of literature, courtly culture, administration, and elite education — irrespective of what populations spoke at home or which polity governed them. (Hodgson, 1974; Green, 2019; Eaton, 2019) Isfahan, Herat, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Delhi were, in this sense, nodes within a single cultural system, even though most of their inhabitants were never ethnically Persian.

This shift in criterion substantially alters the map. Consider Central Asia. Uzbekistan today is unambiguously a Turkic-speaking state, and no serious analysis should suggest otherwise. Yet Samarkand and Bukhara — its two most historically consequential cities — served for centuries as centers of Persian literary and scholarly production. The case for a Persianate layer there requires no claim on Uzbek political allegiance; it requires only acknowledging a stratum of shared cultural history that predates, and outlasts, the modern linguistic border.

The Caucasus offers a more consequential case. Azerbaijan’s contemporary national identity rests substantially on Turkic language and orientation toward Turkey. Yet for much of its history the territory lay within Iranian political structures, and its classical elite culture was produced largely in Persian. More broadly, several of the Turkic dynasties that ruled portions of the Iranian plateau — the Safavids prominent among them — governed as patrons of Persian court culture rather than as its rivals. Turkic political authority and Persian civilizational prestige were not historically opposed; they frequently operated through the same institutions.

This is the argument available to Tehran, and it is considerably more sophisticated than anything in Aref’s current framing: not that Azerbaijanis are covertly Persian, but that their poetry, their cities, and their historical administrative traditions took shape within a civilizational space that Iran helped construct but never owned outright.

Nowruz offers the clearest instrument for making this case without provoking the territorial anxieties that language inevitably raises. Its most recent UNESCO inscription, joined by Mongolia in 2024, now covers thirteen states: Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia. (UNESCO, 2024) No signatory is required to concede any ethnic or political claim by joining that list — which is precisely why it functions as an effective instrument of cultural diplomacy in a way that a “union of Persian speakers” cannot. A shared spring festival demands nothing of anyone. A union defined by language asks every participant to choose a side.

4. Turkey Within the Persianate World

The most striking implication of the Persianate framing is also the one Tehran has the strongest incentive to articulate explicitly: it does not exclude Turkey.

Regional commentary has already begun reading Aref’s proposal along these lines — as a Persian-speaking counterweight to the Organization of Turkic States. (Caspian Post, 2026) That framing is not wrong, but it is incomplete. If Iran’s proposal is understood primarily as a response to Turkic integration, Ankara becomes an adversary by definition. But under a civilizational rather than a present-day political framing, Turkey turns out to occupy a position partly inside the space Iran claims to represent. Ottoman court poetry developed in sustained dialogue with the Persian literary canon; Persian served for centuries as a prestige language of Ottoman elite education, alongside Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. The single most globally recognized figure of that shared canon, Jalal ad-Din Rumi — celebrated today, with justification, as part of Turkey’s own cultural heritage and buried in Konya — composed the overwhelming majority of his work in Persian. Turkey itself continues to observe Nowruz.

None of this diminishes Turkish identity or Ankara’s Turkic-world project; that is precisely what makes it a more effective rhetorical instrument than a rival ethnic claim would be. An assertion of the form “you are not truly Turkish” invites easy and confident rejection. An assertion of the form “your civilization, like ours, took shape within a shared Persianate space, long before either of our modern states existed” cannot be dismissed the same way, because it demands nothing be relinquished. It asks only that Turkey recognize the map it has spent two decades drawing was never monochrome.

This is the argument Iran has not yet made, notwithstanding ample historical resources to make it. Aref’s proposal does the opposite: by defining the project around who speaks Persian today, it hands Ankara precisely the clean, exclusive contrast that best serves Turkish interests — a small, impoverished Persian club set against a large, confident Turkic one. The apparent irony is that Tehran’s stronger asset was never linguistic exclusivity but cultural inclusiveness, deployable at Turkey’s own expense.

5. The Ceiling of the Shi’a Model

If a more persuasive civilizational alternative is available, the question follows why Tehran has not organized its strategy around it. The answer lies in what Iran actually chose to export after 1979.

The Islamic Republic’s foreign policy toolkit since the revolution has rested overwhelmingly on religious-ideological solidarity: revolutionary Shi’ism, the “Axis of Resistance,” and a narrative of opposition to the United States and Israel. This toolkit has produced durable results — footholds in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, cultivated over decades of investment in Shi’a communities and allied militias. It is not a toolkit that failed; it succeeded within a specific and bounded geography.

That geography does not extend into Central Asia. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan are overwhelmingly Sunni societies, as is Turkey. For these audiences, an ideology built on revolutionary Shi’a identity is not merely unpersuasive; in some contexts it is regarded with active suspicion, carrying associations with sectarian export that regional governments have every incentive to keep at arm’s length.

Analysis of the August meeting by SpecialEurasia captures this asymmetry precisely, framing Iran’s approach in Central Asia as pragmatic and non-ideological — built on trade, energy, transport, and cultural exchange — in explicit contrast to the ideological, resistance-based model Tehran pursues in the Levant. Tajikistan’s growing trade relationship with Iran — some $254.3 million in the first half of 2026 alone, up nearly 15 percent year-on-year, alongside Iranian-backed drone manufacturing on Tajik soil — illustrates a second, quieter track of Iranian influence in the region: transactional, security-oriented, and largely free of revolutionary rhetoric. (SpecialEurasia, 2026)

Cultural and civilizational appeals — Ferdowsi, Nowruz, the historical memory of Bukhara and Samarkand — carry none of the sectarian baggage attached to revolutionary Shi’ism. They ask nothing of a Sunni Central Asian state that Turkish or Turkic appeals do not equally ask.

The resulting picture is symmetrical: the identity that makes Iran a formidable actor along the Mediterranean coast is the same identity that constrains its reach across the Caspian and beyond. Tehran’s strength in the Middle East and its comparative weakness in Central Asia are not two separate phenomena; they are a single phenomenon observed from two directions.

6. Implications for Israel

For Israeli strategic analysis, this dispute over cultural framing might appear academic — a matter of competing historical claims among states over which Israel exercises no direct influence. It is not. It bears directly on how Israel ought to read the current map of regional power.

The prevailing framework has been straightforward and, for some time, serviceable: Iran constitutes the primary threat, while the Turkic world — Azerbaijan above all, and by extension a more accommodating orientation toward Ankara and Central Asia — has functioned as a natural counterweight. Baku has been a genuine security and energy partner; Turkey, notwithstanding periodic friction, has generally been treated as a state whose interests diverge sufficiently from Tehran’s to be useful. The logic of “the enemy of my enemy” performed real strategic work.

That framework is now under strain, for reasons unrelated to Iran’s cultural proposals and entirely related to Turkey’s own trajectory. Ankara is no longer simply a counterweight to Tehran; it is emerging as an independent center of regional power, with its own institutional architecture in the Organization of Turkic States, its own military reach into Syria and the South Caucasus, and its own ambitions that do not automatically align with Israeli interests merely by virtue of running contrary to Iran’s. A regional order organized around the principle that “whoever opposes Iran is aligned with us” was never a complete strategy; it functioned only so long as Iran remained the sole aspiring regional hegemon.

It no longer is. This is where Iran’s faltering attempt to construct a civilizational counter-pole — however unlikely to succeed in its present form — becomes relevant to Israeli policy in a manner its architects did not intend. A weak, contested, but genuinely existing Persianate pole of gravity, situated alongside an increasingly assertive Turkic one, does not by itself improve Iran’s record toward its adversaries. But it performs a function that unchecked Turkic ascendancy would not: it keeps the region’s cultural and political map plural rather than allowing a single project to define it.

This should not be read as an argument for rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. The regime in Tehran remains what it has been: a state sponsor of terrorism, an active threat to Israel, and a proliferation risk. The distinction that matters is between Iran as a civilization and the Islamic Republic as a regime; conflating the two, in either direction, produces poor policy. What Israeli strategy requires is not fewer adversaries but a clearer accounting of which adversary’s unconstrained rise would prove more consequential — and that calculation now requires monitoring Ankara’s civilizational ambitions as closely as Tehran’s.

7. Conclusion

Three outcomes appear plausible from this point. The most likely is that the proposal recedes quietly, as its 2024 predecessor did — a paragraph in a communiqué, a working group that never reconvenes. A second, marginally more durable possibility is a decorative institution: a cultural commission, a set of memoranda, without meaningful capacity to shape events. The third, and most consequential, is that Tehran abandons the framework of formal union-building altogether and instead invests, quietly and incrementally, in the underlying instruments — language institutes, joint heritage nominations, university exchanges, tourism — without ever declaring a union at all.

Any of these three outcomes leaves the same underlying dynamic in place. For four decades, the Islamic Republic constructed its foreign policy around what makes Iran part of a larger Islamic world. Confronted with a rising Turkic order it cannot out-compete on ideological terms, it may be discovering — tentatively, and without yet saying so plainly — what makes Iran a world of its own.

References

Caspian Post. “A Persian-Speaking Alliance Against the OTS? Why Iran is Reviving an Old Idea.” 2026.

Eaton, Richard M. India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765. Allen Lane, 2019.

Green, Nile, ed. The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press, 2019.

Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol. 2. University of Chicago Press, 1974.

IRNA. “Iran’s VP Proposes Formation of Union of Persian-Speaking Countries, Regions.” 2026.

ISNA. اتحادیه کشورهای فارسی‌زبان تشکیل [“Formation of the ‘Union of Persian-Speaking Countries.’”] 2024.

Mehr News Agency. ضرورت تشکیل اتحادیه کشورهای فارسی‌زبان [“The Necessity of Forming the ‘Union of Persian-Speaking Countries.’”] 2024.

Mehr News Agency. “Iran Calls for Setting Up Persian-Speaking Communities: VP.” 2026.

SpecialEurasia. “Iran-Tajikistan and the Persian-Speaking Union Proposal.” 2026.

UNESCO. “International Day of Nowruz.” UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Representative List, 2024.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 218 (July 17, 2026)

Introduction

The Israeli cabinet’s unanimous recognition of the Armenian Genocide in June 2026 generated predictable reactions: Turkish condemnation, Azerbaijani diplomatic protest, and Armenian restraint. Less predictable — and analytically more revealing — was the response from Tehran. Iranian state media framed the decision not as an act of historical justice but as an Israeli strike against Ankara, a geopolitical maneuver dressed in moral language. The irony was pointed: Iran itself has never formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, despite hosting one of the oldest Armenian communities in the Middle East and despite the fact that the term genocide — ‘naslkoši’ in Persian — was coined by a Jewish jurist, Rafael Lemkin.

This paper argues that Iran’s management of Armenian collective memory constitutes a coherent, if unacknowledged, policy of tolerated memory without formal recognition — a model in which a minority community is granted cultural, religious, and even political space to commemorate its historical trauma, while the state carefully withholds the diplomatic act that would transform private grief into public accountability. This model is not incidental. It reflects a structural logic that governs how the Islamic Republic handles historical memory more broadly: other peoples’ pain is selectively instrumentalized, one’s own geopolitical interests are protected, and — most strikingly — the Jewish Holocaust is actively denied at the highest levels of state. The result is a coherent asymmetry: Armenian memory is tolerated; Jewish memory is weaponized through denial; and Iranian state recognition of either remains diplomatically inconvenient.

A secondary argument concerns the persistent conflation, in Western analytical literature, of Azerbaijanis in Iran with the political positions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. This conflation is historically and empirically unwarranted. Iranian Azerbaijanis have been embedded in Iranian political life for centuries — constituting a substantial portion of the country’s ruling elite, from the Safavid and Qajar dynasties through to the Islamic Republic itself — and their relationship with Armenia’s memory is shaped by an Iranian historical frame rather than a Baku-directed one.

Literature Review

The Armenian community in Iran has received sustained scholarly attention, though rarely in connection with the politics of genocide recognition. Sanasarian’s foundational study of religious minorities in Iran establishes the legal and institutional framework within which Armenians operate: recognized in the constitution, granted parliamentary seats, permitted their own schools and churches, yet subject to informal pressures that constrain public political expression (Sanasarian 2000). Chaqueri’s earlier monograph, the first systematic English-language survey of Armenian-Iranian history, documents the paradoxical centrality of a community that remained politically marginal (Chaqueri 1998). A 2024 article in Iranian Studies updates this picture, tracing how the Islamic Republic’s evolving use of the term aqaliyyat (minority) has affected Armenian self-positioning within Iranian political discourse.

On the specific question of genocide recognition and its relationship to Iranian foreign policy, the most directly relevant recent contribution is Yacoubian’s analysis of Armenian advocacy under regional constraints, which introduces the concept of “muted empathy” to describe Iran’s position: acknowledgment of the Armenian tragedy in cultural and religious spaces, without any formal diplomatic declaration (Yacoubian, Armenian Weekly, 2025). This paper builds on that framework while adding two dimensions absent from Yacoubian’s analysis: the comparative dimension of Holocaust denial as the mirror image of tolerated Armenian memory, and the granular distinction between Iranian Azerbaijani identity and the pan-Turkic solidarity politics of Baku.

The Persian-language scholarship adds a layer unavailable to most Western analysts. Ismail Ra’in’s Qatl-e ʿĀm-e Armaniyan (1978), still the only comprehensive Persian-language study of the genocide, demonstrates that Iranian scholarly recognition of the events of 1915 long predates any official state position — a gap that itself constitutes the central puzzle of this paper (Ra’in 1978). The archival documentation assembled in Tarikh-e Irani (2021) further confirms that Iranian intellectuals and officials acknowledged the genocide in private discourse across the twentieth century, even as state policy maintained strategic silence.

On the theoretical level, this paper draws on constructivist approaches to memory politics, as elaborated in recent scholarship on genocide recognition as a political act distinct from historical fact (Feindt et al. 2014; International Affairs 2023). The French scholarly tradition, particularly the analysis of France’s 2001 recognition law in CEMOTI — a journal devoted precisely to the Ottoman and Iranian world — provides a useful comparative case: recognition as a parliamentary act that outpaced executive preference, driven by a combination of diaspora lobbying and bilateral political friction (Masseret 2001). Ferhadjian’s comparative study of Armenian genocide and Holocaust recognition frameworks in Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah (2003) informs the paper’s treatment of asymmetric memory politics.

For the Azerbaijani dimension, the paper relies primarily on Shaffer’s Borders and Brethren (MIT Press, 2002), the most rigorous treatment of Iranian Azerbaijani identity and its relationship to Baku’s irredentist politics, supplemented by Souleimanov’s analysis of the limits of secessionism in Iranian Azerbaijan (2011) and Atabaki’s historical study of the competition between pan-Turkism and Iranian nationalism in the region (2006).

A Note on Terminology

The term “Azerbaijani” requires clarification at the outset. In Russian and much of the Western scholarly literature, the word azerbaijanets is applied indiscriminately to both the citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Turkic-speaking population of Iran’s northwestern provinces of East and West Azerbaijan — as if these two groups constituted a single, undifferentiated ethno-political unit. This conflation is analytically misleading and underlies much of the confusion in Western assessments of Iranian domestic politics.

Persian usage draws a meaningful distinction. The term Āzari (آذری) in contemporary Iranian discourse refers primarily to the inhabitants of the Iranian provinces historically known as Azerbaijan — that is, the population of Tabriz, Urmia, and surrounding areas. The Turkic-speaking population of these provinces more commonly self-identifies, and is identified by others in Iran, as Tork (ترک) — Turks — a term that foregrounds linguistic and cultural affiliation rather than the territorial-political identity implied by “Azerbaijani.” The citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan, by contrast, are typically referred to in Iran as Āzarbāyjāni (آذربایجانی) or simply as the northern neighbors across the Aras River.

These are not merely lexical distinctions. They reflect genuinely different historical trajectories, political loyalties, and cultural orientations. Throughout this paper, the term “Iranian Azerbaijanis” refers to the Turkic-speaking population of northwestern Iran, while “Azerbaijanis” without qualification refers to citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Where the distinction is analytically significant — as it frequently is — it will be made explicit.

1. Tolerated Memory, Withheld Recognition: Iran’s Armenian Policy

The Armenian presence in Iran is among the oldest and most continuously documented Christian minority communities in the Islamic world. Brought to Iran in large numbers by Shah Abbas I in the early seventeenth century — relocated from Julfa in the Araxes valley to New Julfa near Isfahan in a forced but ultimately community-preserving deportation — Armenians became embedded in Iranian commercial, artistic, and diplomatic life in ways that left lasting institutional traces. By the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the community numbered several hundred thousand, concentrated in Tehran, Isfahan, and the northwestern provinces. Today, reduced by emigration to an estimated 100,000–150,000, Iranian Armenians retain a constitutional status denied to most non-Muslim minorities: they are explicitly recognized in the Basic Law of the Islamic Republic, hold two reserved seats in the Majles — one for northern, one for southern Armenians — and maintain their own schools, churches, and cultural organizations under the supervision of the Khalifegari council, the community’s supreme governing body (Sanasarian 2000; Ra’in 1349/1970).

On April 24 of each year, commemorative services are held openly in Armenian churches across Iran. The Cathedral of Saint Sarkis in Tehran hosts the principal ceremony; its courtyard contains a memorial to the victims of the Genocide, inaugurated in 1973 — nearly a decade before the Islamic Revolution and maintained without interruption since. In April 2025, the Armenian embassy in Tehran reported that the ceremony proceeded as usual, with flowers laid at the memorial and prayers offered for the dead. Iranian state television did not cover the event.

This last detail is not incidental. It captures with precision the logic of what this paper terms tolerated memory: the Islamic Republic permits the Armenian community to grieve, commemorate, and transmit its historical trauma across generations, within the bounded space of communal religious life. What it does not permit — or more precisely, what it has consistently declined to perform — is the state act of formal recognition that would transform private Armenian grief into an Iranian diplomatic position.

Iran has never officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. It does not appear on any authoritative list of states that have done so. This is not, as the Persian-language scholarship makes clear, a matter of historical ignorance or scholarly dispute. Ra’in’s Qatl-e ʿĀm-e Armaniyan (1978), the only comprehensive Persian-language study of the genocide, documents the events of 1915–1923 in detail and leaves no ambiguity about their character. The historical analysis assembled in Tarikh-e Irani (2021) demonstrates that Iranian intellectuals, journalists, and politicians acknowledged the genocide across the twentieth century — from the Constitutional Revolution era through the Pahlavi period and into the Islamic Republic. The gap between private acknowledgment and official silence is not a product of uncertainty. It is a product of calculation.

The calculation is geopolitical. Turkey is Iran’s neighbor, its largest regional trade partner outside the sanctions regime, and a state with which Tehran maintains a competitive but functional relationship across multiple theaters — Syria, Iraq, the South Caucasus, Central Asia. An official Iranian recognition of the Armenian Genocide would constitute a direct challenge to the foundational narrative of the Turkish state, one Ankara would be unlikely to absorb without diplomatic consequences. The Islamic Republic, for all its ideological confrontationalism, has consistently preferred to keep its quarrel with Turkey on terrain of its own choosing. The Armenian question is not that terrain.

The logic extends to Azerbaijan. The Republic of Azerbaijan is Turkey’s closest ally, shares a border with Iran’s most restive Turkic-speaking provinces, and serves as a transit corridor of genuine strategic importance. Any Iranian move that strengthened the Armenian position in the regional memory wars would register in Baku as a hostile act — and would reverberate inside Iran among those segments of the Azerbaijani-Iranian population most receptive to pan-Turkic messaging.

The result is a stable, if morally uncomfortable, equilibrium: Armenian memory is tolerated because suppressing it would alienate a loyal and historically integrated community; Armenian genocide recognition is withheld because granting it would cost more than it would gain. The community is permitted to remember. The state declines to confirm.

This equilibrium becomes considerably more complex — and analytically more revealing — when placed alongside Iran’s position on the Holocaust. Here the Islamic Republic has not chosen strategic silence. It has chosen active denial. Holocaust denial in Iran is not a fringe phenomenon: it has been articulated from the highest levels of state, institutionalized in academic conferences, and incorporated into the ideological repertoire of the revolutionary establishment (USHMM 2016; ACIS 2019). The 2006 Tehran conference on Holocaust “revisionism,” convened under presidential auspices, was not a diplomatic miscalculation — it was a statement of position.

The juxtaposition is striking. Armenian memory: tolerated, contained, depoliticized. Jewish memory: actively negated, weaponized, deployed as an instrument of anti-Israeli and anti-Western messaging. In both cases, the Islamic Republic’s posture toward historical atrocity is determined not by the weight of evidence or the demands of moral consistency, but by the political utility of each position at any given moment. Other peoples’ pain, in this framework, is a resource to be managed — allocated, suppressed, or amplified according to the needs of the state.

This is not, it should be emphasized, a uniquely Iranian phenomenon. The politics of genocide recognition are instrumentalized across the region and beyond, as the timing of American, French, and now Israeli recognition of the Armenian Genocide amply demonstrates. What makes the Iranian case analytically distinctive is the simultaneity of the three positions — tolerated Armenian memory, withheld Armenian recognition, active Holocaust denial — within a single state apparatus, and the coherence with which all three serve the same underlying strategic logic.

1. Tabriz Is Not Baku: Iranian Azerbaijanis and the Limits of Pan-Turkic Solidarity

The Azerbaijani diplomatic protest against Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide — a formal note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding reconsideration of a decision made by a sovereign state regarding events in which Azerbaijan had no historical part — requires explanation. The Republic of Azerbaijan was never a constituent territory of the Ottoman Empire. Its population played no role at all in the deportations and massacres of 1915–1923. By any conventional standard of diplomatic logic, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by a third party is not Azerbaijan’s affair.

The explanation lies not in history but in bloc politics. Baku’s reaction was a reflex of pan-Turkic solidarity: an attack on the Turkish historical narrative is perceived, in the political culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan, as an attack on the Turkic world as a whole. The Armenian question is furthermore inseparable, in Azerbaijani domestic politics, from the legacy of the Karabakh conflict — three decades of war, ethnic cleansing of over 800 thousand Azerbaijanis, tragedy of Khojaly, and Armenian narratives of victimhood that have made any Armenian claim to historical justice politically toxic in Baku. For a significant portion of the Azerbaijani information space, the logic is nearly automatic: if Armenians are speaking, one must deny; if Turkey is under pressure, one must defend. The diplomatic note was less a considered foreign policy position than a conditioned response.

What makes this response analytically significant is what it reveals about the assumed unity of the “Azerbaijani” world — an assumption that Western analysts have been too quick to make and too slow to interrogate. The conflation of the Republic of Azerbaijan with the Turkic-speaking population of northwestern Iran is not merely a terminological imprecision, as noted above. It is a substantive analytical error with real consequences for the assessment of Iranian domestic stability, minority politics, and the reach of pan-Turkic ideology inside the Islamic Republic.

The Turkic-speaking population of Iran’s East and West Azerbaijan provinces inhabit a historical frame that is Iranian before it is Turkic. The provinces of Azerbaijan have been part of the Iranian political and cultural space, under various dynasties and designations, for centuries. The Safavid dynasty, which established Twelver Shi’ism as the state religion and laid the foundations of modern Iran, was itself of Turkic-speaking Azerbaijani origin and conducted its court in both Persian and Azeri Turkish. The Qajars, who ruled Iran from the late eighteenth century until 1925, were likewise of Turkic origin. In the Islamic Republic, the pattern continues: the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was an ethnic Azerbaijani from Tabriz; his son Mojtaba Khamenei, widely discussed as a potential successor, is Azerbaijani by descent; the current President Masoud Pezeshkian was born in Mahabad and identifies as Azerbaijani. Far from being a marginalized periphery, Iranian Azerbaijanis have been, and remain, among the most politically integrated communities in the country.

This integration shapes, in fundamental ways, how Iranian Azerbaijanis relate to the Armenian community — and to the Armenian historical narrative. For much of the population of Tabriz, Urmia, and Julfa, Armenians are not the enemy constructed by Karabakh wars. They are old neighbors. The concentration of Armenian churches, monasteries, and historically Armenian neighborhoods across East and West Azerbaijan is not incidental: it reflects centuries of coexistence in a shared provincial space. The monastery of Saint Stepanos near Julfa, the Church of Saint Mary in Urmia, the Armenian quarter of Tabriz — these are not foreign implants but local landmarks, integrated into the fabric of regional life (Ra’in 1349/1970).

This is not to suggest that pan-Turkic sentiment is absent among Iranian Azerbaijanis. It exists, it has organizational expression, and it is attentive to signals from Ankara and Baku. Atabaki’s historical analysis documents the long competition between pan-Turkist and Iranian nationalist currents within Azerbaijani political identity, a competition that has never been fully resolved (Atabaki 2006). Shaffer’s more recent and more provocative account argues that the potential for Azerbaijani separatism in Iran is systematically underestimated by analysts who take Iranian state claims of minority integration at face value (Shaffer 2002). These are legitimate scholarly positions that cannot be dismissed.

What they do not establish, however, is that the pan-Turkic tendency is dominant, or that Iranian Azerbaijanis as a whole share Baku’s reflexive anti-Armenian posture. Souleimanov’s careful empirical analysis of secessionist sentiment in Iranian Azerbaijan concludes that pan-ethnic solidarity with the Republic of Azerbaijan, while present, does not translate into political mobilization at a level that threatens Iranian territorial integrity — and that the reasons for this lie precisely in the depth of Azerbaijani integration into Iranian institutions (Souleimanov 2011). Grebennikov’s analysis of why Azerbaijanis support the Iranian state reaches a similar conclusion through a different methodological route (Grebennikov 2010).

The implications for the present argument are direct. When Israel recognized the Armenian Genocide, the Azerbaijani state responded with a diplomatic protest rooted in the story of Karabakh and pan-Turkic bloc solidarity. But that protest does not speak for the Turkic-speaking population of northwestern Iran. Tabriz is not Baku. It does not share Baku’s historical grievances or its political allegiance to the Turkish alliance. For many of its inhabitants, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide is not an attack on their identity — it is, at most, a distant diplomatic event involving a community they have lived alongside for centuries.

The Western analytical tendency to treat “Azerbaijanis” as a unified transnational actor — with Tabriz as a southern extension of Baku’s political will — misreads the evidence and, more consequentially, misframes the political dynamics of one of Iran’s most strategically important regions.

Conclusion: The Politics of Selective Memory and the Limits of Moral Consistency

The Israeli recognition of the Armenian Genocide has been analyzed, in most Western commentary, as a bilateral event: a decision about Israel’s relationship with Turkey, freighted with the history of a once-functional alliance and the bitterness of its collapse. This paper has argued that the more revealing story lies elsewhere — in the responses of actors whose reactions were, in different ways, more structurally significant than Ankara’s predictable outrage.

Iran’s response — sardonic commentary from state media, framed around Israeli hypocrisy — was analytically coherent but self-undermining. It drew attention, whether intentionally or not, to a contradiction at the heart of Iranian memory politics: a state that tolerates Armenian commemoration within its borders, actively denies the Holocaust at the highest levels of its government, and withholds formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide as a matter of geopolitical convenience. These three positions are not contradictions. They are, as this paper has argued, expressions of a single underlying logic: historical memory is a resource to be managed, not a moral obligation to be discharged. Armenian grief is useful as a marker of communal loyalty and religious pluralism; Armenian recognition would be costly in Ankara and Baku. Jewish memory is useful as an instrument of anti-Israeli mobilization; its affirmation would undermine the ideological foundations of the revolutionary state. The asymmetry is not accidental. It is policy.

Azerbaijan’s response — a formal diplomatic protest against a decision about events in which Azerbaijan had no historical part — illustrates a different view: own local grievances from over three decades long conflict with memories of Khojaly atrocities, and  the subordination of historical judgment to bloc solidarity.
What it is not is a position grounded in historical engagement with the events of 1915. And it is emphatically not a position that can be attributed, without serious analytical distortion, to the Turkic-speaking population of northwestern Iran, whose historical relationship with the Armenian community is shaped by centuries of coexistence.

These findings carry implications beyond the specific case of Armenian genocide recognition. They suggest, first, that the politics of historical memory in the Middle East and the South Caucasus cannot be adequately analyzed through the lens of bilateral relationships alone. The recognition or non-recognition of historical atrocities is embedded in regional alliance structures, domestic minority management strategies, and long-term ideological investments that cut across conventional diplomatic categories. Iran’s Armenian policy makes no sense as an isolated decision; it makes complete sense as one element of a coherent, if unstated, framework for managing historical truth as a political instrument.

They suggest, second, that the category “Azerbaijani” requires disaggregation in any serious analytical treatment of the region. The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Turkic-speaking population of northwestern Iran share a language and elements of a cultural heritage. They do not share a political identity, a historical memory, or a relationship to the Armenian question that can be treated as interchangeable. Western policy analysis that conflates the two will systematically misread both Iranian domestic politics and the regional dynamics of the South Caucasus.

They suggest, third, that the moral force of genocide recognition depends, in no small part, on its independence from political convenience. The timing of Israel’s recognition — whatever the weight of moral considerations that informed it — invited precisely the kind of cynical framing that Iranian state media deployed. This is not an argument against recognition; the Armenian Genocide is a historical fact. It is an argument for the proposition that recognition has its fullest moral weight when it is demonstrably not an instrument of current policy — when it precedes, rather than follows, the diplomatic rupture that makes it convenient.

References

Persian / فارسی

• رائین، اسماعیل. قتل‌عام ارمنیان در دوران سلاطین آل عثمان. تهران: امیرکبیر، ۱۳۵۷ [1978].

• رائین، اسماعیل. ایرانیان ارمنی. تهران: امیرکبیر، ۱۳۴۹ [1970].

• دولت‌آبادی، یحیی. تاریخ معاصر یا حیات یحیی. تهران: عطار؛ فردوسی، ۱۳۶۲ [1983]. ج ۴.

• «ایرانیان و نسل‌کشی ارمنیان؛ از فروغی تا حسینیان.» تاریخ ایرانی [tarikhirani.ir]، ۱۴۰۰ [2021].

• «نسل‌کشی یا تراژدی بزرگ ارامنه در سال ۱۳۳۳ق/۱۹۱۵م: استدلال‌های مخالفان.» فصلنامه تاریخ ایران، دانشگاه اصفهان [jhr.ui.ac.ir].

• «ارامنه ایران.» اطلس اقلیت‌های دینی ایران [adyan-iran.com].

French / Français

• Masseret, Olivier. “La reconnaissance du génocide arménien de 1915 par le Parlement français: Brève histoire politico-diplomatique d’une loi atypique.” CEMOTI, n° 31, 2001, pp. 113–140.

• Masseret, Olivier. “La reconnaissance par le Parlement français du génocide arménien de 1915.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, vol. 73, n° 1, 2002, pp. 139–155.

• Ferhadjian, Sophie. “Ailleurs, hier, autrement: connaissance et reconnaissance du génocide des Arméniens.” Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, n° 177–178, janvier–août 2003.

• Akcam, Taner. “Genèse d’une histoire officielle: Le tabou du génocide arménien hante la société turque.” Le Monde Diplomatique, juillet 2001, p. 20–21.

English

• Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious Minorities in Iran. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

• Chaqueri, Cosroe. The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 1998.

• Shaffer, Brenda. Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity. MIT Press, 2002.

• Atabaki, Touraj. “Pan-Turkism and Iranian Nationalism.” In Iran and the First World War. I.B. Tauris, 2006.

• Souleimanov, Emil A. “The Evolution of Azerbaijani Identity and the Prospects of Secessionism in Iranian Azerbaijan.” Connections: The Quarterly Journal, 11(1), 2011.

• Grebennikov. “Why Do Azeris Support the Iranian State?” CPSA, 2010.

• Zarifian, Julien. The United States and the Armenian Genocide: History, Memory, Politics. 2024.

• Resende, E. & Budryte, D. (eds.) Memory and Trauma in International Relations. Routledge, 2014.

• “Constructivist memory politics: Armenian genocide recognition in Latvia.” International Affairs, Oxford Academic, 2023.

• “The Armenian Community and Changing Iranian Perceptions of Minority.” Iranian Studies, Vol. 57, Issue 2, 2024.

• Yacoubian. “The politics of Armenian Genocide recognition and regional constraints in the Middle East.” Armenian Weekly, 2025.

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Holocaust Denial and Distortion from Iranian Government and Official Media Sources, 1998–2016.” USHMM, 2016.

• Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University. “What is Behind Iran’s Advocacy of Holocaust Denial?” ACIS Iran Pulse, 2019.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 208 (June 6, 2026)

Western strategic analysis of Iran follows a well-established perimeter: the nuclear file, ballistic missile development, proxy networks across the Middle East. This perimeter is not wrong — but it is incomplete. It systematically excludes a vector that is already operational: Iran’s engagement with the political imagination of post-Soviet societies.

The evidence is visible in open sources. A consistent pattern emerges from monitoring comment sections and audience responses across major outlets covering the Iran–US standoff — including TRT, Yeni Şafak, Al Jazeera, and BBC Arabic — as well as Telegram channels oriented toward Central Asian audiences. Across these platforms, Tehran is framed overwhelmingly as the aggrieved party. More significantly, internal Iranian dissent is systematically recast as externally sponsored provocation. Criticism of the Islamic Republic originating from within Iran is not engaged; it is immunized against. This is not spontaneous sentiment. It is the signature of a narrative that has already found its audience and shaped its cognitive filters. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

The post-Soviet space is not a passive recipient of Middle Eastern security dynamics. It is a contested informational environment in which Iranian narrative operations, transit dependencies, and identity fault lines interact to produce strategic consequences that neither Iran specialists nor post-Soviet analysts are adequately tracking. This paper argues that the gap between these two analytical communities is itself a vulnerability — and that closing it is a prerequisite for understanding what is already unfolding across the Eurasian arc.

Why the Post-Soviet Space Is Not Peripheral to Tehran

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, Iranian strategic thinking treated the post-Soviet space as a secondary environment — fragmented, inward-looking, and largely insulated from Tehran’s core security concerns. (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020) This perception has changed, driven by the structural transformation of Eurasian connectivity over the past decade. Two channels account for Tehran’s growing stake in the region.

Transit and economic interdependence. Iran is a critical node in Eurasian overland logistics, including the North-South International Transport Corridor. Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan — depend on Iranian territory for the viability of trade routes that bypass both Russia and China. This dependency creates a structural asymmetry: Central Asian governments have limited incentive to align publicly with Western pressure on Tehran. Economic interdependence generates political deference — and political deference creates informational receptivity. (Al-Monitor, 2021; International Crisis Group, 2024)

Islamic networks and cultural proximity. Across Central Asia, Islamic institutions maintain connections — historical, financial, and personal — to Iranian religious infrastructure. These networks do not function primarily as ideological transmission belts; their influence is ambient and durable. Collectively, they produce a baseline interpretive disposition toward Iranian narratives: a vocabulary, a set of implicit assumptions about religious authority and its relationship to political legitimacy. (Pew Research Center, 2017)

Central Asian states are not neutral observers of the Iranian crisis. They are embedded in it — through corridors, through networks, through the quiet calculus of governments that cannot afford to be seen choosing sides.

The Mechanics of Iranian Narrative Reach

Iranian narrative reach in Central Asia does not operate through direct consumption of Persian- or Arabic-language state media. The linguistic reality makes this implausible: Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen neither speak nor read Persian, and Arabic-language broadcasting faces an identical barrier. The partial exception is Tajikistan — where Tajik, classified by Soviet and Russian linguistic tradition as a distinct language from Iranian Persian and Afghan Dari, nonetheless shares sufficient spoken intelligibility that Tajik audiences can follow Iranian audio and video. What Soviet-era alphabet reform foreclosed is not comprehension but literacy: the Arabic script was replaced by Cyrillic in 1940 and never restored at the popular level. Iranian narrative reach therefore operates almost entirely through intermediaries.

Indirect media amplification. The most consequential intermediaries are Turkish-language outlets — TRT and Yeni Şafak — which embed Iranian framing within a broader Islamic solidarity narrative resonant across Turkic-speaking societies. Russian-language aggregators and Telegram channels constitute a second amplification chain: for educated Central Asian audiences, Russian remains the primary language of international news, and Iranian framing circulates through this ecosystem within a wider anti-Western narrative architecture sustained since 2014. Neither channel requires Iranian editorial direction — structural alignment of interests between Iranian, Turkish Islamist, and Russian anti-Western framings ensures consistent amplification without coordination. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

The transit dependency effect. Central Asian governments’ transit dependencies generate editorial self-restraint: government-aligned media in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan consistently avoids framing requiring a public position against Tehran. The absence of critical coverage is not silence — it is a signal. In an environment where state media remains dominant, governmental restraint functions as implicit endorsement, shaping audience priors before any explicit Iranian narrative reaches them.

The inoculation effect. These mechanisms converge to produce narrative inoculation: Central Asian audiences develop resistance to counter-narratives. The testimony of Iranian protesters, the documentation of IRGC repression — all arrives pre-labelled as Western-sponsored disinformation. This is the signature of a mature narrative operation: not persuasion requiring ongoing reinforcement, but the restructuring of interpretive filters so that counter-evidence is automatically discredited at the point of reception. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

Azerbaijan as the Cognitive Fault Line

Of all the post-Soviet states, Azerbaijan occupies the most structurally complex position in Iran’s narrative calculus. It is simultaneously the primary target of Iranian narrative operations in the South Caucasus, the principal transit node connecting Central Asia to European markets, and a secular Turkic state rooted in a historically Shi’ite cultural space that maintains documented security cooperation with Israel.

The narrative target. Iranian state-aligned media has constructed a consistent picture of Azerbaijan: a secular state captured by Israeli and American influence, functioning as a forward platform for hostile operations against Iran’s northern frontier. (Tasnim, 2026; Fars News, 2026; Mashregh News, 2022) This framing serves a precise domestic function — externalising internal instability by anchoring it to a culturally familiar enemy. What makes it analytically significant is not its accuracy but its operational consequences: Iranian security institutions act on this picture. Military exercises near the Azerbaijani border, diplomatic protests over Israeli defense presence, and encirclement rhetoric are behavioural outputs of a threat perception that the narrative both reflects and reinforces. (Reuters, 2021) Perception here is not a soft variable — it is a driver of robust security decisions.

The structurally inconvenient reference point. Azerbaijan generates a deeper Iranian anxiety that is ideological in character. The Islamic Republic’s legitimizing narrative rests on the presumed inseparability of Shi’ite identity from Islamic governance. (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020) Azerbaijan disrupts this claim structurally, not intentionally: decades of Soviet secularisation have produced a society in which Shi’ite cultural heritage coexists with secular governance and stable cooperation with Israel. Baku does not export this model — the disruption is a byproduct of proximity and divergent historical trajectories, not a strategic objective. (Cornell, 2017) An ideological rival can be debated; a structural alternative can only be denied — and denial requires sustained narrative effort. As Iran’s internal crisis deepens, the narrative labour required intensifies. (Brookings Institution, 2023)

Where the two vectors converge. Azerbaijan is the point at which Iranian narrative operations and Central Asian transit dependencies become one strategic problem. If Iranian framing of Baku as a hostile, Israeli-controlled platform gains traction — in Central Asian public opinion, in Turkish media, in Russian-language aggregators — it introduces friction into the transit relationships that post-Soviet states depend on. It does not need to be believed universally; it needs only to raise the political cost of visible alignment with Baku. The resilience of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation cannot be assessed in isolation from this informational environment. That environment is being actively shaped in ways that increase the political cost of the partnership and reduce its legibility to outside observers. (Inbar, 2018; Rubin, 2022)

The Analytical Gap and Its Strategic Consequences

The phenomenon mapped in this paper has attracted little systematic attention in Western analytical communities—not1 for absence of evidence, but because of how analytical institutions are structured. Western expertise on Iran and on the post-Soviet space has developed as separate intellectual communities with distinct language requirements, publication venues, and policy interlocutors. Iran’s engagement with the post-Soviet space falls precisely into the gap between them: too peripheral to the Middle Eastern security agenda for Iran specialists, too remote from Russian and Chinese competition narratives for post-Soviet analysts.

Three consequences follow. First, the inoculation effect goes unmonitored until it has already structured audience priors across an entire region — early warning requires tracking the ambient informational environment, not merely specific campaigns. Second, the strategic value of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation is assessed against an assumption of informational neutrality that does not exist. Third, Central Asian governments’ editorial self-restraint on Iranian matters is consistently misread as geopolitical neutrality, distorting expectations in Western diplomatic engagement with Astana, Tashkent, and Ashgabat.

Framing Iran as a Middle Eastern problem, and the post-Soviet space as a separate file, is not a neutral analytical choice — it reproduces the geographical error that Iranian narrative operations exploit. Closing the gap requires institutional mechanisms that reward cross-community collaboration and build monitoring capacity for the indirect amplification chains through which Iranian framing enters regional information ecosystems.

Conclusion: The Invisible Front and What It Demands

Iran is already operating across the post-Soviet information space — not through overt propaganda campaigns, but through structural dependencies, ambient cultural connectivity, and indirect amplification chains that function below the threshold of conventional influence-operation monitoring. The post-Soviet space is not a passive recipient of Middle Eastern security dynamics. It is an active front.

Three conclusions emerge. The first is structural: Iranian narrative reach is a function not of messaging capability but of a pre-existing informational environment shaped by transit dependencies, religious networks, and indirect media amplification. Instability and influence travel through networks, not along administrative boundaries — and monitoring frameworks need to reflect that logic. The second concerns Azerbaijan: Baku sits at the intersection of Iranian narrative targeting and Central Asian transit dependence, making it the single most consequential node in this dynamic. The operating conditions of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation demand considerably more sophisticated monitoring than is currently applied. The third is institutional: the analytical gap between Iran specialists and post-Soviet analysts is a structural vulnerability. Closing it requires not individual initiative but institutional design.

The invisible front is invisible not because it is hidden — it is visible in open-source monitoring, in comment sections, in editorial patterns, in the self-restraint of governments that depend on Iranian transit. It is invisible because the analytical communities tasked with seeing it are looking in the wrong direction. And cognitive fragmentation — the quiet restructuring of how regional audiences read political reality — does not wait for political fragmentation to become strategically consequential. It precedes it. Reorienting that gaze is the prerequisite for everything else.

Bibliography

Academic and Scholarly Sources

Cornell, Svante E. Azerbaijan Since Independence. London: Routledge, 2017.

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Vakil, Sanam. Iran and the Global Order: Aspiration and Constraints. London: Chatham House, 2020.

Asgarov, Shahin. “Azerbaijan–Israel Relations and Regional Security Dynamics.” Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2024.

Think Tanks and Policy Research

Brookings Institution. Iran Protests and the Crisis of Regime Legitimacy. Washington, DC, 2023.

International Crisis Group. Iran’s Domestic Unrest and Regional Implications. Brussels, 2024.

Inbar, Efraim. Israel–Azerbaijan Relations and the Iranian Factor. BESA Center, 2018.

Rubin, Uzi. Missiles, Drones, and Deterrence: Israel’s Strategic Environment Beyond the Middle East. INSS Strategic Assessment, 2022.

Media Sources

Al-Monitor (Turkey Desk). “Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Changing Security Architecture of the South Caucasus.” 2021.

BBC Persian. “Iran’s Protests and the Limits of Repression.” 2026.

Reuters. “Iran Warns Against Israeli Presence Near Its Borders.” 2021.

Iranian Sources (cited as narrative illustration)

فارس (Fars News Agency). «نقش اسرائیل در بی‌ثبات‌سازی پیرامون ایران» [The Role of Israel in Destabilising Iran’s Periphery]. Tehran, 2026.

مشرق نیوز (Mashregh News). «آذربایجان، اسرائیل و معادلات جدید امنیتی در شمال ایران» [Azerbaijan, Israel, and the New Security Equations on Iran’s Northern Frontier]. Tehran, 2022.

تسنیم (Tasnim News Agency). «چاлш‌های امنیتی ایران در مرزهای شمالی» [Iran’s Security Challenges on Its Northern Borders]. Tehran, 2026.

Demographic and Social Data

Pew Research Center. Religious Belief and National Identity in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington, DC, 2017.

Primary Empirical Source

Kogan, Gershon. Monitoring of open-source social media, comment sections, and regional media ecosystems — including TRT, Yeni Şafak, Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic, and Russian-language Telegram channels oriented toward Central Asian audiences. 2025–2026.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 206 (May 25, 2026)

At the time this article was written, it was still unclear whether the White House intended to resume large-scale strikes on the infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran — or whether it would heed the recommendations of the leadership of Pakistan, Qatar, and the UAE to continue negotiations with Tehran. It is clear that, in the event of a military decision, Israel would also join the United States — its leadership is unlikely to take such a step without a “green light” from Washington. For now, however, there appears to be no consensus on this issue within the U.S. president’s team.

In any case, it is still too early to speak of the end — at least of this stage — of the full-scale regional confrontation between the American-Israeli bloc, supported by a number of Arab Gulf states, on the one hand, and the bloc of Iran and its radical Islamist proxies, backed by Russia and China, on the other. Nevertheless, some interim results of this conflict can already be assessed. For example, to what extent each of the regional and global players involved, regardless of further developments, will be able to count the outcome as an unequivocal gain — or will instead have to calculate the balance of geopolitical and economic losses.

Who Came Out Ahead?

In the first weeks of the “Second Iran War,” which began on February 28, a number of observers did not rule out that Russia could become one of the main — if not the main — beneficiaries of what was happening. As during the first “12-day” war between Israel and Iran in the summer of 2025, supported by the United States and its partners, Moscow chose not to intervene directly in the current, far larger and more prolonged conflict either. It limited itself to general statements in support of Tehran and criticism of the United States and Israel, while also offering to assist in “advancing peaceful solutions.” Russia’s support for Iran under the strategic partnership agreement between the two countries, announced in January 2025, and under the package of agreements signed in the spring of that year in the fields of diplomacy, the economy, humanitarian affairs, and security, has been and remains minimal in this war.

Moscow’s position at the beginning of the war was expressed quite clearly by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in the formula “this war is not our war”, making it clear that, despite diplomatic solidarity with Tehran, Moscow does not consider itself an active participant in this campaign. According to him, Russia must minimize the consequences for the Russian economy of “those global shocks which, as we can already see, are beginning. We probably need to secure benefits for ourselves wherever possible, cynical as that may sound.”

As we have already noted, in exchange for its “limited non-intervention,” fate gave Moscow an opportunity to receive unexpected additional dividends. Apart from hopes that the massive use of American Tomahawk missiles to destroy Iranian facilities theoretically makes supplies of such missiles to Ukraine less likely, any prolonged blockade of the Strait of Hormuz or destruction of oil and gas export capacity in the Persian Gulf expands the market for sanctioned Russian energy resources.

“Moscow rushed to load crude onto tankers to take advantage of soaring oil prices triggered by Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” Bloomberg’s observer believed. “A tariff waiver courtesy of Donald Trump, whose administration is under growing pressure over spiking gasoline prices, now permits buyers to purchase those barrels without fear of sanctions tied to the Kremlin’s 12-year war on Ukraine.”

Indeed, if Russian budget revenues from oil and gas in January–February 2026 were almost 50% lower than a year earlier, the budget deficit reached 3.45 trillion rubles — about $44 billion — which was more than 40% higher than in January–February 2025, and the situation was moving toward a 10% cut in non-military budget items, then by March the financial situation had begun to improve significantly. Overall, according to expert estimates, depending on the duration of the conflict, Russia could receive between $45 billion and $151 billion in additional budget revenues in 2026. Moreover, if the war lasts three months, additional export revenues would exceed Russia’s entire budget deficit for 2025; under a six-month scenario, Moscow could even achieve a budget surplus and replenish its sovereign fund, sustaining elevated military spending for many years.

However, not everything ultimately looks so rosy. First, it should be taken into account that the Iranian underground plants destroyed by American cruise missiles and the Israeli Air Force will, until the regime is able — if that is even possible — to resume their operation, cease for the foreseeable future to be sources of weapons and ammunition supplies for the Russian army.

Second, Russia’s refusal to condemn the terrorist strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and its de facto support for the war Tehran is waging with drones against the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are already seriously damaging Moscow’s position in the Gulf states, including by forcing these countries to seek help in securing their airspace not only from the United States and Israel, but also from Kyiv. Not to mention that further strengthening of cooperation between the Gulf states and Western powers during the conflict may mean a further erosion of Russian influence in the region.

Another factor is that Russia has been receiving its share of the sanctioned goods it needs thanks to schemes developed by Iran, which for decades built networks of companies and intermediaries in the UAE, Turkey, and Southeast Asia to circumvent international sanctions. However, Iran’s direct military confrontation with the Arab Gulf states is quite capable of undermining this established mechanism. Not to mention that Iranian aggression may accelerate the formation of a broader regional coalition to contain Iranian ambitions — something that, presumably, would not greatly coincide with Russian interests in the Middle East.

Most importantly, the cessation, at this stage, of hostilities on the Iranian track forces a substantial revision of the most optimistic hopes for windfall profits from oil and gas exports, which account for roughly one fifth of the Russian budget. According to recently published Reuters calculations, although Russia’s state oil and gas revenues are set to rise by 39% year on year in May to $9.8 billion, thanks to a global oil price rally, revenues are expected to decline from April by around 17% due to cyclical payments of profit-based tax. Russia’s budget will also lose out from increasing subsidies to refineries in the form of the reverse excise tax and damper payments.

It would seem that the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz first by Iran, and then the U.S. fleet’s blockade of Iranian seaborne oil exports — which has affected https://news.usni.org/2026/05/22/russian-crude-exports-increase-as-other-strait-of-hormuz-transits-remain-low China, Japan, India, and other countries of Southeast and East Asia — opens up additional opportunities for Russia, especially for its energy supplies to China. Some expectations of this kind were linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing, where 42 intergovernmental documents were signed on May 20 of this year. However, the “flagship” project of the current stage of the energy partnership — an agreement on Chinese investment in the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline and the corresponding commercial contracts for Russian supplies — was not signed. In Beijing, experts believe, there is still uncertainty over whether China needs another route for Russian hydrocarbons, given the two already existing routes and its own oil reserves, which have not yet been tapped. Especially if, under the current circumstances, the Russian side — lacking other major sales markets — seeks to raise its traditionally low, at times near-dumping, prices.

Russia and Israel

It is also important to understand where Israel fits into this entire configuration, and whether this is affecting — or may affect in the future — its relations with Russia. Over the past two decades, Moscow has built these relations against the backdrop of balancing its partnership with Tehran in its confrontation with the United States and Israel, including military-technical cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and attempts to maintain working contacts with the Jewish state. Within official or semi-official Russian discourse, which is also broadcast to a number of other post-Soviet countries, the United States and Israel are often portrayed as key actors of the “global West,” pursuing aggressive foreign policies and seeking to preserve global hegemony. Accordingly, international crises are interpreted as the result of actions by Western powers, while their opponents are often presented as victims or participants in a defensive struggle.

Moscow continues to condemn the actions of Israel and the United States in their current war with Iran, but at the same time generally avoids steps that could lead to irreversible escalation in its relations with Washington and Jerusalem. It seems that, at least for now, Russia does not wish to see Jerusalem among its open enemies. This, however, does not prevent individual representatives of the Russian political establishment, and especially pro-Kremlin information circles, from participating in anti-Israeli propaganda campaigns — and it is difficult to doubt that these were sanctioned at a fairly high level.

The presence of corresponding messages, or “understandings” of the mood in these circles, explains, for example, the detention by Russian security forces of at least 40 Israeli citizens who arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on a flight from Tel Aviv — both holders of dual Israeli and Russian citizenship and those with only Israeli citizenship. According to media reports, people were held for about five hours without water, food, or access to a toilet, and during interrogations they were told directly that Iran is Russia’s ally, and therefore “Iran’s enemy is our enemy as well.” They were released only after the intervention of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Embassy in Moscow.

Another important indicator of what is happening is the mood of the Russian public, a significant part of which still forms its political worldview under the influence of federal television channels. Thus, a survey by the authoritative Moscow-based Levada Center, conducted in late March 2025, showed that in the current conflict around 40% of Russians sympathized with Iran, while only 2% sympathized with Israel and the United States. Another 53% of respondents expressed sympathy for neither side.

Given the systematic and consistent language of hatred that has taken root in the post-Soviet space after October 7, 2023, and in particular after Operation “A People Like a Lion,” the new antisemitic wave against the backdrop of the start of Operation “Lion’s Roar” did not come as a surprise, says researcher Nati Kantorovich. However, in stark contrast to the reaction to the operation in June 2025, this time enormous volumes of such language were recorded from the very first day of the operation. According to the data he presented, by March 14, 2026 — two weeks after the start of the war — about 76% of the 59,000 relevant messages analyzed in traditional media and social networks contained antisemitic or anti-Israeli rhetoric to one degree or another. This contrasted with 5–10% — with a significantly smaller volume of source material — in the period preceding the operation.

For their part, more than 80% of Israelis, according to an April 2025 study by the American Pew Research Center, said they had a negative view of Russia — whereas before February 24, 2022, Russia’s image among Israeli citizens had generally been positive. Among repatriates from the former USSR, according to the results of a survey, conducted in December 2025 by the popular Israeli Russian-language news portal NewsRu.co.il — “Israel’s main friends are Azerbaijan and the United States, enemies are Iran and Turkey”.  More than half of respondents, 55%, named Russia an enemy of Israel. This compares with 71% in 2024, less than half — 49% — in 2022, and less than a third — 32% — in 2016.

Another 37% of those surveyed at the end of last year believed that Russia was neither a friend nor an enemy of Israel, while only 6% considered Russia its friend. At the same time, more than half of the Russian-speaking Israelis surveyed acknowledged that their attitude toward Russia is influenced by the nature of its voting — usually in support of anti-Israel resolutions — at the UN. Some 52% said that this voting affects them “to a significant extent,” and among those who consider themselves patriots of Israel, the figure was 54%.

As for the Israeli government, it continues, to one degree or another, to maintain the appearance of “business as usual” with Moscow, although the “special relationship”  between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin, which took shape at the height of the Israeli-Russian “honeymoon” in the second decade of this century, is clearly a thing of the past. One of the few exceptions was the conduct of current Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who, during a visit to Kyiv in July 2025 aimed at launching a strategic dialogue with Ukraine on the Iranian threat, stated that “Israel strongly condemns Russia’s attacks on the civilian population.” He also reaffirmed his country’s commitment to supporting Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

Sa’ar’s statement during a visit to Estonia was even tougher, when he argued that Russia, China, and North Korea form an “axis of authoritarianism” supporting the “axis of terror” — Iran and its allies in the Middle East: Hamas, Hezbollah, Shiite formations in Iraq, and Palestinian militants. However, apart from some media resonance in Israel and relatively neutral, mildly critical mentions in official Russian media, these démarches had almost no practical significance.

It is possible that the position of the current Israeli leadership toward Moscow will also be shaped with regard to the line of the Donald Trump administration, which does not see Russia’s presumed support for Iran as a major problem. Some observers believe it is prepared to ease anti-Russian sanctions within the framework of an unrealistic — and possibly even destructive and risky, especially for the Middle East — 1980s worldview: friendship with Moscow alongside confrontation with Tehran, doubts about NATO’s authority, and the use of tariffs. Trump’s downplaying of Russia’s alleged support for Iran and easing of sanctions reflect a 1980s-era worldview that favors befriending Moscow, confronting Tehran, questioning NATO, and using tariffs. These views are shaping U.S. policy in ways that may be disruptive and risky, particularly in the Middle East.

On the other hand, some developments that have become public may introduce certain adjustments to this approach. In addition to the supply of Russian drones to Iran, attention was drawn to information obtained by The Jerusalem Post, according to which Russian intelligence provided Iran with a detailed list of 55 critical energy infrastructure sites in Israel, which would allow Iran to carry out precision missile strikes capable, in principle, of paralyzing the country’s national energy system.

It is difficult to say whether such episodes, if repeated, will become a “red line” requiring the Israeli leadership to abandon its traditional “balance of interests” and substantially revise relations with the Russian Federation. For now, only isolated cases are visible on the surface, such as the coordination in April of this year between Russian diplomats and the Israel Defense Forces over the evacuation of about 200 employees of the Russian state nuclear company working at the Bushehr nuclear power plant after Israeli-American strikes in the area. Presumably, the main dialogue between Jerusalem and Moscow is taking place behind the scenes, and its content can only be guessed at for now.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 194 (April 4th, 2026)

Part 1

Epic Fury in the Social Networks: Anti-Israeli and Anti-American Discourses

In the situation described above, a wide range of anti-Israeli and anti-American stereotypes have spread widely across social media. Numerous videos portraying the alleged “successes” of Iranian strikes against Israel and American forces have circulated widely, particularly in the Tajik-language online environment. More broadly, Iranian propaganda describing supposedly massive losses suffered by the United States and Israel tends to resonate with certain groups within the Central Asian segment of the internet, especially since it is often amplified by channels associated with Islamic fundamentalism or with Russian media networks. At the same time, it should be noted that a significant number of Russian propagandists, who are well-known in Central Asia, have publicly distanced themselves from Iran and emphasize that the war is economically advantageous for Moscow.
Various conspiracy theories have also spread widely in the region and across the broader post-Soviet space. For example, many users claim that the Pakistani airstrikes against Afghanistan were in fact orchestrated by the United States and/or Israel. This interpretation has been particularly widespread in Russia but it has also gained traction in Central Asia.

Many mythologized conspiracy narratives have entered the Central Asian information space through Western media and social networks. In particular, discussions of the current war frequently refer to the so-called “Epstein files.” Several versions of this interpretation circulate online. One of them has an anti-Trump orientation and claims that the war is being used to distract public attention, in a manner reminiscent of the plot of the film Wag the Dog. Another version takes an anti-Israeli form, asserting that Israel allegedly controls American politics through such mechanisms — a narrative that structurally reproduces older conspiracy tropes associated with the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In some comments, even broader generalizations appear that question the democratic character of the political systems of the United States and Israel. Within such conspiratorial interpretations, these states are portrayed as being controlled by corrupt elites acting in the interests of hidden backstage forces. Such arguments reproduce a typical narrative found in conspiracy discourse about the “secret governance” of political processes.

Critical assessments also frequently appear in the comments, reproducing arguments common in a number of Western media outlets, where the legality of military action against Iran is questioned from the standpoint of international law. Discussions also often include criticism of the Arab Gulf states that is typical of Islamist and more radical anti-Western narratives. For example, one commenter writes:

“They are direct accomplices in an act of aggression against a sovereign state. Iran repeatedly issued official warnings to all the countries where these traitors, lackeys of the USA (written in the original in lowercase), have allowed American military bases to be deployed. Such is the fate of such piglets — Tabaki jackals (a reference to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle book). This is the natural right of a defending state according to the norms of international law. A country that hosts the aggressor’s military bases — from which strikes are launched, and where command centers, communications systems, surveillance equipment, radars, air defense systems, etc. are located — automatically becomes an accomplice to aggression, and therefore military facilities located in those countries become legitimate targets”.

Such arguments reproduce a widely circulated claim found in a number of anti-Western political narratives — that states allowing the deployment of U.S. military bases on their territory automatically become parties to armed conflicts involving the United States.

It is also noteworthy that the comment uses expressions such as “piglets” (podsvinki in Russian) and “Tabaki”. These metaphors are less characteristic of Middle Eastern propaganda rhetoric than of the Russian information space, where similar language has been used in political polemics, including in public discourse—albeit usually in reference to conflicts in Eastern Europe. From Eastern Europe also comes the insulting practice of writing the names of rival states with lowercase letters, e.g. usa instead of USA.

Finally, one can encounter arguments framed in the spirit of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. For example, some users claim that “the conflict is acquiring civilizational dimensions and Pakistan should threaten to transfer nuclear weapons to Iran in order to force the United States and Israel to stop the war”.  This reflects the well-known notion circulating in the global information space about a common “Islamic nuclear bomb”.

Three Sources and Three Components of Anti-Israeli Sentiment in Central Asian Social Media

The examples discussed above illustrate that it is possible to distinguish three groups in Central Asia that express anti-Israeli and anti-American attitudes and that originate from fundamentally different external sources of influence. At the same time, these three informational influences often intersect and closely interact with one another.

These are: Islamist-fundamentalist discourse, Western left-radical discourse, and a Russian-language anti-Western discourse (which in some cases also carries anti-Semitic undertones).

Islamist-Fundamentalist Discourse. The first source of anti-American and anti-Israeli attitudes is connected with religious-political and Islamist narratives that circulate through Islamic media outlets, preaching networks, and social platforms. These narratives are frequently built around themes of solidarity within the Muslim world, support for Palestine, and criticism of Western intervention in the Middle East.

Studies of media discourse show that in Islamically oriented media, the Palestinian question is often interpreted through a religious and civilizational lens, which strengthens emotional mobilization among audiences and helps form durable political interpretations of the conflict.

Such narratives spread not only through traditional media but also through social networks and messaging platforms, which have become key channels for the circulation of politically and religiously framed information about conflicts in the Middle East. Research on digital communication shows that these platforms play an important role in forming transnational networks that support and disseminate political interpretations of international conflicts.

At the same time, within Central Asia the sources of such influence differ from country to country. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, these ideas tend to spread primarily through Arab and, especially, Turkish media, as well as through religious organizations and transnational Islamic online platforms. Erdogan-era Turkish political-Islamic media, for example, actively shape discourse around the Palestinian question, presenting it as a central element of broader political and religious solidarity within the Muslim world.

In Tajikistan, by contrast, Iranian informational and even direct political influence may be more visible due to linguistic and cultural proximity. This includes media platforms and cultural initiatives aimed at Persian-speaking audiences. In such cases, political and religious narratives spread through Persian-language information channels and religious networks, which distinguishes Tajikistan’s information environment from that of other Central Asian countries.

Western Pro-Iranian Discourse. A second source of such ideas is a Western pro-Iranian discourse that spreads through international activist networks, English-language social media, and global online platforms. This discourse takes different forms — here we focus primarily on its more radical interpretations, which draw on the concepts of anti-imperialism. In its most radical form, which also influences some anti-Western interpretations in Central Asia, these approaches portray Middle Eastern conflicts involving Iran as part of a broader struggle against “colonial” and “neo-colonial” structures of global power. Such arguments largely echo the official rhetoric of Iranian propaganda. According to some experts, the spread of this discourse is supported by covert Chinese financial backing.

These ideas circulate actively in English-language social media and are often absorbed by part of the younger audience in Central Asian countries, particularly among users oriented toward Western educational and cultural environments.

Russian Anti-Western Discourse. Another important source of the anti-Western narratives discussed above is the Russian information space, which continues to play a significant role in media consumption across Central Asia.

A large share of the region’s population regularly receives news and analytical commentary from Russian television channels, online outlets, and social media platforms. Within this discourse, the United States and Israel are frequently portrayed as key actors of the “collective West,” pursuing an aggressive foreign policy and seeking to preserve global hegemony. Consequently, international crises are often interpreted as the result of Western actions, while their opponents, Iran in this case, are presented as victims or participants in defensive struggles.

Such interpretations are actively disseminated through Russian-language media and the blogosphere and are easily transmitted into local debates in Central Asian societies. Despite the broad presence of Russian media in the region, however, I would rank Russian sources only third in terms of their influence on the formation of anti-Western and anti-Israeli discourse in Central Asia. Among Russian commentators, not only pro-Iranian positions are widespread but also a more moderate alternative perspective articulated by the press secretary of President Putin, Dmitry Peskov: “The war that is taking place is not our war… We must minimize the consequences of global upheavals for our economy and extract benefits where possible…”

The Intersection of Discourses. In the information space of Central Asian countries, where different informational influences intersect, these three types of narratives frequently overlap in practice. In the digital environment, users often reproduce arguments originating from different informational ecosystems simultaneously — for example, combining anti-Western interpretations from Russian media with rhetoric of Islamic solidarity and left-radical critiques of imperialism.

As a result, a hybrid information space is emerging in Central Asia in which ideas that originate in different geopolitical and ideological contexts mix together and are adapted to local political and cultural conditions.

Conclusion

The reaction of Central Asian states to the 2026 war between the United States, Israel, and Iran demonstrates a clear contrast between official diplomacy and the dynamics of public discourse. Governments across the region have adopted cautious neutrality, driven primarily by economic vulnerability, geopolitical constraints, and the long-standing tradition of multi-vector foreign policy. For Central Asian elites, maintaining balanced relations simultaneously with Russia, China, the West, and the Middle East remains a central strategic priority.

At the societal level, however, the situation is far more complex. Social media discussions reveal a fragmented public sphere in which different ideological, cultural, and geopolitical influences compete. Sympathy toward Iran is stronger in regions where Islamic identity or Persian cultural connections are more prominent, particularly in Tajikistan and parts of the Ferghana Valley, while societies shaped more strongly by the legacy of Eurasian nomadic culture tend to display weaker pro-Iranian sentiment. In most cases, however, these differences do not translate into open political confrontation between elites and society, unlike the deeper “elite–street” divide observed in parts of the Arab world.

The analysis also demonstrates that anti-Israeli and anti-American narratives circulating in Central Asian social media originate from three overlapping external information ecosystems: Islamist-fundamentalist discourse, Western radical pro-Iranian discourse, and Russian-language anti-Western (and sometimes simultaneously anti-Semitic) media narratives. Although these discourses differ in origin and ideological foundations, they frequently merge within the digital environment, producing hybrid interpretations of international conflicts. This fusion creates an informational landscape in which religious solidarity, geopolitical resentment, and conspiracy narratives reinforce one another.

Despite this active online environment, the political consequences of these narratives remain limited for now. In most Central Asian countries, strict state control over public demonstrations prevents the transformation of online discourse into mass political mobilization. Nevertheless, the continued spread of anti-Western narratives, especially when combined with Islamist ideological frameworks, carries potential long-term risks for regional security.

Overall, Central Asia’s response to the war reflects the region’s broader geopolitical condition: political neutrality at the level of states, but cultural and political pluralism — and sometimes polarization — within society. As global conflicts increasingly unfold in digital spaces, the interaction between external propaganda networks and local cultural contexts will likely play an increasingly important role in shaping political perceptions across the region.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 192 (March 23, 2026)

Belarus is an unusual place to consider in the context of the Middle East. Three Israeli presidents were born there, while Belarus itself has had only one president since independence. The Aliaksandr Lukashenka regime in Minsk is well aware of this historical connection and sometimes references it as another convenient talking point rather than a foundation for genuine engagement. Thus, this awareness does not translate into any meaningful support for Israel in its current struggles. The current war in Iran is framed by the Lukashenka administration and its state media through the familiar lens of anti-Western rhetoric and selective moral posturing. Yet, their narratives are somewhat different from that of the Kremlin.

Belarus and Iran maintain steady diplomatic and political ties that have grown somewhat closer in recent years, often framed by both governments as a shared response to Western sanctions. High-level contacts are not uncommon. For example, in August 2025 Aliaksandr Lukashenka hosted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Minsk, where the two sides discussed expanding cooperation and signed a package of agreements covering areas from industry and technology to tourism and defense-technical cooperation. Pezeshkian remarked during the talks that the two countries share “common positions and views on issues of global importance,” while Lukashenka responded in similar terms, assuring his guest that Iran “has been and remains our friend” and that Belarus intends to fulfill its commitments. The Iranian side also pointed to practical areas where this alignment might develop, including economic and cultural exchanges as well as military-technical cooperation. Pezeshkian noted that Iran has lived under Western sanctions for more than four decades. Belarus, for its part, has also been subject to Western restrictions for many years. In this sense, the language of cooperation between the regimes in Minsk and Tehran is not only about trade or diplomacy but also reflects a broader political narrative in which sanctions are presented less as a constraint than as a reason for closer partnership.

Since the launch of the operations Epic Fury by the United States and Roaring Lion by Israel, the Lukashenka regime reacted just as one would expect. Under Lukashenka and especially after 2020, the Belarusian political scene does not really produce anyone with his kind of media presence or authority in foreign policy. The rest are mostly background players whose role is to echo the main line and occasionally decorate it with institutional language.

On March 2, at the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council, Belarus’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Larysa Belskaya, addressed the situation in Iran. There is a certain irony in the setting because the UNHRC has long shown a persistent obsession with the Jewish State. Belskaya followed the usual diplomatic script, expressing concern over the escalation and calling for political and diplomatic solutions. But a closer look reveals some interesting phrasing. She cited the UN Charter and emphasized that the use of force against the “political independence” of a state is prohibited. She went on to describe the U.S. and Israeli actions as “interference under the pretext of so-called human rights protection,” following years of sanctions and culminating in armed aggression. The words “so-called” carry a lot of weight there. She also stressed that “any use of force against the leadership of a sovereign state” is unacceptable. It sounds like a defense of international rules, but really it’s just a rigid regime worrying about keeping another regime and its leadership safe.

On March 4, Lukashenka met with the Iranian ambassador to Belarus, Alireza Sanei, and expressed his solidarity with the regime in Tehran. He claimed that wars are “simply genetically unacceptable for us,” because Belarus, being at the center of many major conflicts, knows their cost all too well. He obviously implied the devastation of World War II, which affected nearly every Belarusian family and claimed over two million lives, including up to 800,000 local Jews. A Belarus-centric reflection on this history makes clear to anyone with a sense of empathy why Israel is based on the principle of “never again” and why it fights desperately to defend itself against those who deny its right to exist. Instead, Lukashenka called Israel’s actions a “treacherous attack” and turned to the personality of the killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He recalled meeting Khamenei a few times and described him as a “humanist” more focused on protecting his people than on military matters. He insisted that the harm done to Khamenei and his family, including the death of his wife from her wounds, was “absolutely unacceptable.” Khamenei spent decades calling for the destruction of Israel, presenting the Jewish State as an enemy that must eventually be eliminated. He has ruled a regime that represses dissent and punishes those who challenge its authority. In the political vocabulary of regimes like those in Minsk and Tehran, “humanism” often seems to mean loyalty to one’s own power and solidarity with fellow rulers under pressure from the outside. Yet one basic question remains: how exactly can a “humanist” describe another country as a “cancerous tumor” and repeatedly call for its eradication?

On 9 March, Lukashenka congratulated Mojtaba Khamenei on taking over as Iran’s supreme leader after his father. In his message, he expressed confidence that Iran would continue defending its independence, maintaining internal stability, preserving its ideological and cultural foundations, and strengthening its international position under the new leadership. Lukashenka also underlined the importance he attaches to Belarus’s partnership with Tehran and signaled interest in expanding contacts and cooperation at all levels. Behind the familiar diplomatic phrasing, the logic is fairly clear. What matters for Minsk is that the system in Tehran remains intact. It is run by people with similar political instincts who view Western pressure as a reason to stand together.

On 13 March Lukashenka again commented on the situation around Iran. On the surface little sounded new. He claimed that the United States and Israel had failed to achieve their goals and presented his own position as “careful,” “balanced,” and “humane.” At the same time he made it clear that Belarus had no intention of becoming involved in the conflict in any way that might create problems for itself. In practice this means rhetorical solidarity with Tehran while keeping Belarus well away from any real political risk.

Yet some of his wording deserves attention. While describing the situation Lukashenka remarked that “the Americans and Jews have already created so many problems for themselves there.” In this context “Jews” is not an acknowledgment of Israel’s Jewish character. It reflects a familiar rhetorical shortcut from (post-)Soviet political slang, where criticism of Israeli policy slides easily into something more suggestive once the line between a state and a people becomes conveniently blurred.

A similar pattern appears when Lukashenka recalls Israel’s operation in Gaza with the phrase “Children… everything is in disarray, there is no living thing left there.” The image is vivid, but the context totally disappears. There is no mention of 7 October, the massacre that started the war, or of the fact that Israel is fighting Hamas, which openly calls for its destruction. For an audience accustomed to state propaganda the picture is simple enough. Israel appears as the source of chaos while the circumstances that forced it to act remain outside the frame.

This narrative collides with realities familiar to many Belarusians. A large number have relatives, friends, or professional contacts in Israel and receive first-hand accounts that differ from the official picture. Belarusian historical memory also includes an awareness of the significant role Jewish communities played in the country’s social and cultural life. Yet in public rhetoric the regime continues to present the conflict in a way that rhetorically aligns with Tehran and fits the broader anti-Western narrative, while the main priority remains the same as always, preserving its own system at home.

Dr. Kiryl Kascian is Head of the Centre for Communication Influences and Propaganda Research, Faculty of Communication of Vilnius University, Lithuania, kiryl.kascian@kf.vu.lt

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 190 (March 17, 2026)

1. Official Position: Concerns and Neutrality

The military operation launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026 may create serious economic challenges for the countries of Central Asia, particularly in the sphere of transportation. The war has significantly disrupted the functioning of two key transport corridors: the International North–South Transport Corridor (Russia – Caspian sea – Iran – India) and the southern branch of the Eurasian East–West transport corridor passing through Iran. This is unfolding against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities in the Black Sea region, which have already had a negative impact on transport routes linking the region with Europe.

Shortly before that, on February 21–22, 2026, the long-simmering conflict between Kabul and Islamabad sharply escalated. This armed confrontation may effectively block the Central Asia-Afghanistan–Pakistan–India transport routes. The hostilities in Iran may also exacerbate instability in Afghanistan due to the close economic ties between the two countries. As a result, the countries of Central Asia may either be forced to increase their involvement in addressing Afghanistan’s internal problems or face growing instability along the Tajik–Afghan and Turkmen–Afghan borders.

If hostilities were to spread to Azerbaijan (a possibility suggested by the Iranian drone strike on Nakhichevan) all international transport routes of Central Asian states could effectively be reduced to the Chinese corridor.

Across the region, there are widespread concerns that the war, and especially the potential collapse of the Iranian regime, could push the Greater Middle East (and subsequently Central Asia) into a period of geopolitical turbulence and uncertainty. Similar references to “turbulence” in the region are also widely found in the Russian press. Among the specific risks mentioned by the Central Asian experts are the possible inflow of refugees from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries into Central Asia.

At the same time, rising oil prices have had a positive impact on Kazakhstan’s economy, partly due to the shortage of oil supplies to China that previously came from the Persian Gulf. A similar dynamic may also benefit Turkmenistan to some extent. For the other countries of the region, however, rising oil prices pose significant economic risks.

Under these circumstances, the states of the region have generally adopted a neutral stance. Such a position allows them greater flexibility in managing the risks outlined above. At the same time, it broadly corresponds to the tradition of the multi-vector foreign policy that has long characterized Central Asian diplomacy.

Kazakhstan has taken a formally neutral but in practice cautiously formulated position that leans toward the Arab Gulf states. Astana has called for a peaceful settlement of the conflict but in its official statements has emphasized the security concerns of the Gulf monarchies and expressed solidarity with their leaders, while simultaneously seeking to maintain good relations with the United States and Israel. President Tokayev sent messages of support to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan and held phone conversations with several of them, including the Emir of Qatar and the President of the UAE. At the same time, Astana expressed condolences to Iran over civilian casualties and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict but did not issue a separate presidential condolence message regarding the death of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Kyrgyzstan has effectively distanced itself from the conflict, limiting its response to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressing serious concern over the escalation, calling for restraint, and urging a peaceful settlement in accordance with international law.

Uzbekistan has likewise called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent condolences to Iran over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei but did so in cautious terms, avoiding criticism of either the United States or Israel.

Tajikistan, which maintains the closest cultural and political ties with Iran in the region, also expressed concern over the escalation and called for an end to hostilities and a peaceful settlement. At the same time, President Emomali Rahmon was the first leader in the region to send an official telegram of condolences to the Iranian leadership and people following the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, emphasizing solidarity with the “friendly and brotherly” people of Iran. Nevertheless, Dushanbe also avoided direct criticism of the United States or Israel, seeking to maintain the balance characteristic of its multi-vector foreign policy.

Turkmenistan, following its long-standing policy of neutrality, responded in the usual restrained manner. Ashgabat described the escalation of the conflict as “regrettable” and called for a diplomatic resolution. 

2. Divided Societies: Regional Patterns in Public Perceptions of Iran and Its Opponents

An analysis of discussions on social media suggests that although Central Asian societies (like their political elites) generally prefer to maintain neutrality, in some cases one can observe something resembling the gap between elites and “the street” known from the Arab world in attitudes toward the United States and Israel. However, the scale of this divide remains far smaller than what is observed in the Middle East.

The depth of this division also varies significantly across the region due to Central Asia’s cultural heterogeneity. One can distinguish between the classical historical Turan — an Eurasian nomadic civilization encompassing most of Kazakhstan, northern Kyrgyzstan, and much of Turkmenistan — and regions shaped by a mixture of historical Turan and historical Iran, namely the sedentary agricultural areas that today largely belong to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Accordingly, public sympathy toward Iran tends to increase significantly in areas where the influence of fundamentalist Islam is strong (notably in the Uzbek-controlled part of the Ferghana Valley) and in regions where cultural, linguistic, and political-economic ties with Iran are particularly close (especially in Tajikistan). By contrast, in the countries of what may be called classical Turan — where the legacy of Eurasian nomadic culture remains strong and the social role of Islam is somewhat less pronounced (partly in Turkmenistan and especially in northern and central Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan) — sympathy toward Iran is noticeably weaker. Consequently, the gap between elite positions and public opinion is also smaller in these areas.

This societal divide, together with the presence of certain pro-Iranian sympathies within the public sphere, acts as a constraint on Central Asian elites when it comes to cooperation with the United States and Israel. This situation is similar to the Arab nations.

These internal cultural and religious considerations operate alongside geopolitical constraints stemming from the need to maintain good relations with China and Russia. Given the regional cultural patterns described above, Kazakhstan’s leadership faces the least domestic pressure in terms of religiously motivated public sympathy toward Iran. At the same time, however, Kazakhstan is subject to a certain degree of Chinese influence and very substantial informational and cultural influence from Russia. Since both of these states support Iran, their positions inevitably shape public opinion within Kazakhstan as well. A similar combination of Chinese and Russian influence can also be observed in Kyrgyzstan.

Another important factor is the degree of state control over public expression. As early as the summer of 2025, the Uzbek authorities called on the population to exercise caution when commenting on the Iran–Israel conflict in order to prevent radicalization and potential threats to domestic security. As a result, most Uzbek media coverage limited itself to reporting factual developments and practical consequences for Uzbek citizens (for example, those evacuated from Persian Gulf countries). The same is largely true for Turkmenistan, where the authorities generally prohibit political expression on the Internet altogether.

Kazakh society, by contrast, enjoys a comparatively higher degree of freedom to discuss foreign policy issues than other Central Asian societies. For this reason, the relationship between public attitudes toward the war in Iran and broader political and identity-based orientations can be observed particularly clearly in Kazakhstan.

For Kazakhs, as for other Muslim peoples, it is significant that the hostilities coincided with the month of Ramadan. This inevitably heightens emotional reactions among fasting Muslims. At the same time, contemporary Kazakh society is highly pluralistic and characterized by a complex and multi-layered identity.

As noted above, the Kazakh people historically emerged from a Eurasian nomadic civilization that was not originally connected to the Islamized Middle East. Yet Kazakhstan has long been a crossroads of different cultural and religious traditions. As a result, several distinct influences coexist within the country today:

1. the relatively liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence within traditional Sunni Islam, which predominates among Turkic peoples;

2. elements of the liberal-modernizing Jadidist Islamic tradition that spread among Turkic peoples in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries prior to the establishment of the Communist rule, and from which the contemporary liberal current sometimes described as “Euro-Islam” later developed (primarily among Turkic and Balkan Muslims);

3. the influence of conservative Sunni Islamic traditionalism that expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union and is often associated with Saudi Arabia, other Middle Eastern countries, and Pakistan;

4. a composite influence of fundamentalist propaganda originating in the Middle East (Arab countries, Turkey, and Iran), including both Sunni and Shiite components;

5. the legacy of the Soviet anti-religious tradition together with the growing influence of Western culture among younger generations following the economic reforms that began after the dissolution of the USSR.

Accordingly, under the influence of these different factors, very different assessments of the war can be heard both among the general public and among opinion leaders. Many Kazakh nationalists in the Kazakh-language segment of the internet supported the actions of the United States and Israel, a position that has been sharply criticized in the pro-Russian segment of the online space. Supporters of a more generalized form of Islamic fundamentalism that does not emphasize Sunni identity as in other parts of the world tend to express stronger support for Iran. Advocates of closer alignment with the “Global South” and with the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have likewise criticized the military operation against Iran.

Liberal groups that favor a pro-Western orientation, while showing a certain degree of sympathy toward the West and Israel, generally support Kazakhstan’s official policy of neutrality. Many centrist commentators similarly defend and justify the government’s neutral stance.

As a result, when the issue of Islamic solidarity arises — particularly during the month of Ramadan – it is interpreted very differently by various groups within society. For fundamentalists or supporters of the “Global South,” solidarity primarily means solidarity with Iran. For supporters of the official state position, it tends to mean solidarity first and foremost with the Arab Gulf states. For some nationalists or pro-Western groups, it may even take the form of sympathy for the Iranian opposition.

Social media activism can sometimes spill over into street-level activity. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, a pro-Iranian rally is reportedly expected to take place. In Kazakhstan, however, such public mobilization is currently unlikely because events in the Middle East are unfolding against the backdrop of more pressing domestic political developments, most notably a referendum on a new constitution on March 15. In the other Central Asian states, where political regimes are generally less liberal, authorities routinely prohibit uncontrolled public demonstrations. Nevertheless, the spread of anti-Israeli and anti-American narratives on social media, combined with the suppression of street-level protest that might otherwise release some of this pressure, may create potential security risks, including the possibility of terrorist acts by pro-Iranian activists.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 189 (March 11, 2026)

As Russia bleeds in Ukraine and Iran confronts a devastating military campaign by the United States and Israel, Tajikistan — bound to both by history, language, and structural dependency — faces a moment that is as dangerous as it is clarifying. The correct response is not to find a new patron, but to build sovereignty.

The Anatomy of Dependency

Among the Central Asian post-Soviet states, Tajikistan holds the most complex and exposed strategic position. It has the lowest GDP and GDP per capita in the former Soviet space, the smallest defense budget, and ranks 108th of 145 countries in global military strength. Some 93 percent of its territory is mountainous. To the south lies Afghanistan, the source of transnational threats including insurgency, narcotics trafficking, and extremism; to the east, China’s Xinjiang region; to the west, a stronger Uzbekistan; and, until recently, a border with Kyrgyzstan historically marked by territorial clashes. Despite the internal calm established by President Emomali Rahmon following the civil war of 1992–1997, the country has long been regarded as a regional powder keg because of its poverty and susceptibility to the spillover effects of external conflicts. Two of its most consequential external partners — Russia and Iran — are now simultaneously at war, and the tremors from both conflicts reach directly into the economic and security fabric of Tajik society.

The Russia connection is structural and deep-rooted. Russia remains Tajikistan’s primary security partner, providing training, military equipment — accounting for over 60 percent of arms imports — and a large military base on Tajik soil. More consequentially, remittances from Tajik labor migrants in Russia have peaked at approximately 50 percent of GDP, the highest ratio in the world. Over one million Tajik citizens work in Russia in any given year, and more than 90 percent of Tajik foreign workers are Russia-bound. This places Tajikistan’s fiscal and social stability directly in the hands of Moscow’s labor market policies — and of Russian domestic politics.

The Iran connection is of a different character but no less substantial. Tajikistan and Iran share a language, a literary canon, and a cultural memory that seventy years of Soviet rule interrupted but did not erase. Iran was the first state to recognize Tajikistan’s independence in 1991 and the first to open an embassy in Dushanbe. During the 1990s and 2000s, Iranian investment produced landmark infrastructure: the $40 million Istiqlol tunnel and the $260 million Sangtuda-2 hydropower station, which came online in 2011, as well as sustained involvement in the Roghun dam project. Bilateral trade reached approximately $484 million in 2025 — a rise of 28 percent over the previous year, giving Iran a 4.5 percent share of Tajikistan’s total foreign trade. The relationship had been painstakingly rebuilt after a sharp rupture from 2015 to 2021, caused by Iran’s reception of a banned Tajik opposition leader and mutual accusations of interference that left deep institutional mistrust. That rebuilt relationship is now once again in acute distress.

As of early March 2026, both partnerships are under simultaneous strain. Russia is entering what RAND analysts describe as a potential serious recession, with its 2025 budget deficit running five times higher than forecast and energy revenues down roughly a fifth. Iran, meanwhile, has since February 28, 2026, been subjected to a major US-Israeli military campaign targeting its leadership, military infrastructure, and nuclear program, producing immediate disruption to trade, airspace, and the investment pipeline on which Dushanbe was depending. Tajik experts cited in Dushanbe’s leading independent media outlet Asia-Plus predicted a prolonged conflict and warned of both direct and indirect consequences for Tajikistan: through trade, investment flows, fuel prices, and remittances from Russian migrants whose own economy is absorbing a secondary shock from the global energy volatility triggered by the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry responded with a call for peaceful resolution through diplomatic means — a formulation of studied neutrality that avoided any attribution of responsibility.

The Illusion of Security

Tajikistan’s security architecture rests on foundations that the Ukraine war has exposed as more fragile than they appeared. Russia’s 201st Military Base — Moscow’s largest outside Russian territory — is operationally thinned, with most troops reportedly redeployed to Ukraine. The Collective Security Treaty Organization CSTO, Russia’s post-Soviet security alliance, has been further discredited: its interventions have served regime-stabilization rather than collective defense, and Moscow’s credibility as a regional security guarantor has been damaged not only by the Ukraine quagmire but by its non-intervention during the Third Karabakh War and the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime. The logic is uncomfortable but unavoidable: a military stretched across a European land war cannot simultaneously commit to guaranteeing security on a 1,357-kilometer frontier facing a Taliban-controlled state.

This is the central paradox of the Russian security relationship: Moscow’s presence is simultaneously a source of stability and a constraint on sovereignty. The base functions as coercive leverage — demonstrated in 2011, when Moscow orchestrated a crackdown on Tajik labor migrants in retaliation for a dispute over base-lease terms. The April 2024 Crocus City Hall attack by Tajik nationals affiliated with ISIS further strained Russo-Tajik relations, fueling anti-Tajik racism in Russia and deportations of migrant workers, straining Tajikistan’s remittance-dependent economy and deepening the global perception of Tajikistan as an incubator of religious extremism. A patron willing to weaponize the economic vulnerabilities of your citizens as a diplomatic instrument, and whose domestic politics produce pogroms against your diaspora, is not a security guarantor in any meaningful sense of the term.

The Iran dimension adds a different layer of institutional fragility. The secular Rahmon government, which governs a majority-Sunni population with stringent restrictions on political Islam, has always held an uncomfortable relationship with an Iranian theocracy whose model of governance represents the antithesis of Dushanbe’s own political theology. The previous rupture in relations — rooted in Iran’s refusal to designate the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan as a terrorist organization, and in compounding financial and political disputes — showed how rapidly civilizational affinity can be overwhelmed by regime interests. The current conflict creates another rupture. Tajik public figures, even those who express solidarity with the Iranian people, are acutely aware that their government cannot afford to antagonize the United States, whose security cooperation is one of the few counterweights to exclusive dependence on Russia and China. The tension between cultural kinship and political self-interest is a permanent feature of Tajikistan’s Iranian policy — and the crisis of March 2026 makes that tension impossible to paper over.

The Chinese Orbit and Its Costs

Into the vacuum created by Russian overextension and Iranian crisis, China has moved with methodical purpose. By 2024, China had become Tajikistan’s primary creditor: external public and publicly guaranteed debt stood at approximately USD 3.1 billion, of which nearly 30 percent is owed to Beijing. China is the second-largest arms supplier nearly 40 percent of imports and has been constructing what satellite imagery suggests is a military base in Tajikistan since 2024, in addition to existing installations monitoring the Taliban and providing counter-terrorism support. While China by 2024 was the largest trading partner of every Central Asian country except Tajikistan — where Russia held that position — that distinction is narrowing rapidly. Chinese corporations also offer Tajikistan higher risk-tolerance for investment in the commodity sector, backed by state funds unavailable to European or Western counterparts.

But substituting Chinese dependency for Russian dependency is not a strategy; it is a rotation of vulnerability. The risks are well-documented: unsustainable debt, perceived loss of national sovereignty, local resentment toward Chinese workers, ecological damage from mining projects, and the bypassing of Tajikistan by major BRI corridors routed through the flatter terrain of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, threatening to reduce Tajikistan’s geopolitical significance rather than enhance it. Public skepticism is rising, fueled by imported Chinese labor, limited local benefits, and debt concerns. Anti-Chinese sentiment is already widespread across the region.

Within multilateral frameworks, China increasingly expects alignment. Beijing condemned the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in the strongest terms and moved to build an opposing front through the SCO and the UN Security Council. Tajikistan, as an SCO member sitting alongside China and Russia, faces institutional pressure to position itself within an anti-Western bloc even when its own strategic interests would benefit from engagement with the West. This structural tension — between what the SCO demands of Dushanbe and what Western partners could offer — is one of the defining constraints on Tajik foreign policy. Both China and Russia, it bears noting, regard President Rahmon as a beacon of stability whose continuity is strategically valuable to them; the alternatives, from their perspective, would be a power vacuum or a democratizing government oriented toward the West. Tajikistan’s leadership is, in this sense, partly a hostage of great-power preferences rather than an agent of its own strategic vision.

A Strategy of Sovereignty: The Road Not Taken

The crises of 2026 constitute not merely a threat but an argument. They demonstrate, with unusual clarity, the cost of structural dependency on authoritarian states. Russia will relocate its military from Tajikistan if operational necessity demands; the Afghan border will be left exposed. Iran will pursue its own ideological agenda regardless of Dushanbe’s interests, and when in crisis will be unable to sustain the investment commitments it made as recently as January 2025. China will extract mineral and strategic concessions calibrated to Beijing’s needs. The case for a different strategic orientation has rarely been stronger.

First, Tajikistan’s geographic position should be converted from vulnerability into asset. Tajikistan sits on the border that matters most to Western security planners: 1,357 kilometers of frontier with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Afghanistan produces the overwhelming majority of the world’s illicit opiates, and Tajikistan is one of the primary transit routes for narcotics moving toward Russia, Europe, and beyond. The narcotics interdiction argument is a systematically underutilized instrument of Western engagement. Western governments have enduring institutional interest in disrupting this supply chain. Dushanbe has the leverage of geography: it controls the most direct land corridor between Afghanistan’s poppy-growing regions and Eurasian markets. A sustained security partnership built around border management, intelligence sharing, and interdiction capacity — framed as a frontline contribution to a shared Western priority — would create the kind of durable institutional relationship that could, over time, reduce dependence on Russian military guarantees without a disruptive formal break.

Second, Tajikistan’s mineral wealth represents a strategic asset that its current partners have systematically undervalued. It is the world’s second-largest producer of antimony — a metalloid used in flame retardants, semiconductors, and the hardening of ammunition — mining around 21,000 tonnes annually, most of which is sold to Russia and China. For decades the dominant global supplier was China, which accounts for roughly half of world production; in 2024, Beijing banned antimony exports to the United States and Europe, leaving Western defense planners scrambling for alternatives. The country also holds deposits of lithium, niobium, and tantalum — materials essential to battery technology and electronics — alongside reportedly one of the world’s largest silver deposits and significant reserves of gold, tungsten, and uranium. Much of this wealth was never fully surveyed after the Soviet collapse. Western interest, long absent, is now arriving.

Third, Tajikistan holds the eighth-largest hydropower potential in the world — 527 billion kWh annually — of which less than five percent has been developed. Its theoretical capacity is three times the current electricity consumption of all Central Asia combined. Rogun, when complete, will be the world’s tallest rockfill dam and the largest power plant in the region. Western multilateral institutions are already financing pieces of this architecture — the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EU among them. These are not charitable gestures; they reflect a structural Western interest in Central Asian energy independence that Dushanbe has been too passive in exploiting.

That passivity extends to the regional level. Tajikistan generates over 80% of the Amu Darya’s flow — the river on which downstream Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan depend for irrigation and survival. Water management, electricity trade, and critical minerals are the substance of any serious Central Asian collective framework.

Fourth, a more promising regional architecture is emerging to establish this collective framework: the resolution of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border dispute in March 2025 — achieved without Russian mediation — points in this direction. Tajikistan should invest in the C5+1 format with the United States and in Central Asian institutions not led by Russia, building collective economic and security frameworks that distribute risk and dilute the leverage of any single external power. Tajikistan has recently reached agreement with London on cooperation on critical minerals, and the CA5+UK ministerial track was launched in the same week as the Iran conflict escalated. These openings should be developed with urgency, not treated as minor diplomatic footnotes. A Central Asia that coordinates on border security, water management, critical minerals, and trade facilitation is a Central Asia with a stronger hand vis-à-vis Beijing, Moscow, and any other outside power. The BISI analysis from July 2025 noted that Tajikistan holds a unique position as the only country hosting Russian, Chinese, and Indian military facilities simultaneously — a fact that, properly leveraged, could give Dushanbe far more room for maneuver than its poverty and size would otherwise allow. India in particular, whose presence at Farkhor Air Base represents the only non-Chinese, non-Russian military foothold, and whose strategic interest in countering both Pakistani and Taliban influence aligns with Tajikistan’s own security needs, is an underutilized partner that Dushanbe could court more deliberately.

Fifth, the Persian civilizational heritage — shared with an Iran that will, in whatever form, eventually emerge from its current crisis — is a genuine soft-power asset that need not be held hostage to the Islamic Republic’s political fortunes. Whatever government eventually emerges in Tehran, the literary and cultural connection with Tajikistan will endure: the common language, the shared canon, the centuries of intertwined intellectual and artistic life. Tajikistan is uniquely positioned to present itself as the guardian of Persian literary civilization within the post-Soviet space — a role that resonates with the Iranian diaspora worldwide, with Western academic and cultural institutions, and with the many Iranians who distinguish sharply between love of Persian culture and attachment to the Islamic Republic. This identity is a diplomatic resource that should be deployed as one.

The structural dependencies that define Tajikistan’s current position are real, and no responsible analysis should minimize the difficulty of changing them. Remittances cannot be redirected overnight. Military agreements cannot be dissolved by diplomatic communiqué. Trade patterns shift over years. The World Bank already projected Tajikistan’s GDP growth moderating sharply through 2027 — and that projection was made before the Iran conflict, which will accelerate the downside risks. But the window for genuine strategic reorientation is open in a way it has rarely been. Russia’s reliability is visibly degrading. Iran’s capacity is severely disrupted. Chinese dependency carries documented long-term costs. The crises of 2026 have, paradoxically, created the conditions for a clarity of purpose that Dushanbe has rarely been forced to articulate.

Tajikistan is too small to dictate its fate, and too strategic to be ignored. That paradox can be a trap or an opportunity, depending on whether Dushanbe chooses to remain a passive object of great-power competition or to become an active architect of its own strategic relationships. If its destiny is to seek external partners, it should choose partners whose interests include its development rather than merely its compliance, and whose political culture does not treat the livelihoods of its citizens as a diplomatic bargaining chip. The question is whether Tajikistan’s leadership possesses the strategic imagination, and the political courage, to walk through the door that history has now opened.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 188 (March 9, 2026)

by Gershon Kogan

Debates about Iran’s possible fragmentation tend to reproduce the same conceptual error: state breakdown is framed as a geopolitical event — sudden, discrete, visible. Fragmentation is better understood as a process rather than an event: a gradual transformation of political coherence, institutional erosion, and narrative competition that reshapes regional security long before any border changes.(Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020)

Iran occupies a unique position as the southern hinge of Eurasian security — a structural node linking the Middle East, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Caspian basin into a single interdependent system.(International Crisis Group, 2024) Instability within Iran therefore does not remain confined to its immediate neighbourhood; it reverberates across Eurasian political and economic networks, affecting regions traditionally analyzed through separate geopolitical lenses. The post-Soviet space is not an external observer of the Iranian crisis — it is part of the same arc of risk.

Security dynamics around Iran are shaped not only by material capabilities but by perception — both within the Islamic Republic and among neighbouring states. Narratives of internal crisis, ethnic vulnerability, and external encirclement increasingly influence strategic behaviour, generating real geopolitical consequences regardless of whether fragmentation ultimately occurs.(Brookings Institution, 2023) This article argues that Iran’s potential fragmentation — understood as a process — would reshape Eurasian security dynamics through three interconnected mechanisms: regional spillover across the South Caucasus, strategic recalibration in Central Asia, and the expansion of cognitive and informational competition across the post-Soviet space.

Two parallel processes create a rare convergence of risks. US–Iran diplomacy on the nuclear file remains deadlocked as the US military build-up in the region accelerates — raising the probability of large-scale military strikes as an operative variable rather than a hypothetical scenario.(Financial Times, 2025; Reuters, 2026) Simultaneously, Iran is experiencing a new wave of protest dynamics, accompanied by intensifying information control and the further concentration of power within the security establishment.(BBC Persian, 2026; Al-Monitor, 2026)

Defining Fragmentation: An Analytical Framework

Fragmentation as applied to Iran is not synonymous with state collapse on the “Libyan” or “Somali” model. It denotes a process of transformation in political coherence that can fundamentally reshape regional security long before any borders change.(Dabashi, 2011; Vakil, 2020) Institutional erosion typically precedes visible collapse — and it is this erosion, not the endpoint, that constitutes the strategically significant object of analysis. Four dimensions are analytically useful.

Territorial fragmentation: peripheral regions de facto exit effective central control without formally declaring independence — a product of administrative overload rather than political separatism.(International Crisis Group, 2024)

Institutional fragmentation: competition between parallel power centres within the state apparatus. In the Iranian context, this is the growing tension between formal government structures and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which commands its own economic base and an increasingly autonomous strategic logic.(Financial Times, 2025) The state remains legally unified but operationally divided.

Functional fragmentation: failures in specific governance domains — border control, financial flows, logistics, basic security services. This is the form of fragmentation most directly exported to neighbouring regions, through smuggling, non-state actor activity, and migration pressure.(Brookings Institution, 2023) Instability diffuses through economic and informational networks without requiring territorial contiguity.

Cognitive fragmentation: the rupture of a unified state narrative, in which different regions, ethnic groups, and social strata begin operating with fundamentally incompatible pictures of political reality.(Keddie, 2006; Dabashi, 2011) Cognitive fragmentation typically precedes institutional stress and thus functions as its early indicator. The Iranian regime understands this threat acutely — which is why narrative control is no less a priority than territorial control.

These dimensions are not mutually exclusive. Realistic scenarios are always hybrid configurations in which institutional weakening amplifies functional failures, and cognitive rupture accelerates both. Most importantly, security dynamics are shaped as much by perception as by material capabilities.(Vakil, 2020) Iranian state-aligned media consistently frames protest activity as externally inspired — primarily by Israel and the United States.(Tasnim, 2021; Al-Monitor, 2026) This is not mere propaganda: such narratives structure the actual behaviour of security institutions and define how neighbouring states are perceived as threat or resource.

Drivers of Instability: Three Layers

The Political-Institutional Layer

Iran’s governance system faces a structural contradiction that neither repression nor cosmetic reform resolves. The regime demonstrates institutional resilience: the IRGC is consolidated, commands its own economic base, and is independent of any electoral cycle.(Financial Times, 2025) Yet the protest dynamics of recent years — from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement to the current wave — have exposed a fundamental legitimacy deficit that securitization alone cannot close.(Brookings Institution, 2023; Reuters, 2026)

Securitization as a governance strategy carries an internal limit: the more aggressively the regime frames domestic dissent as external aggression, the more it binds its own legitimacy to the image of an external enemy. Any de-escalation with outside actors comes to be read internally as capitulation — and therefore becomes politically impossible. Threat perception begins to determine strategic behaviour more precisely than the actual balance of forces.(Vakil, 2020) Iranian state media’s consistent construction of Azerbaijan as a staging ground for Israeli and American influence on Iran’s northern border(Tasnim, 2026; Mashregh News, 2022) is not neutral analysis: it is a narrative that shapes real decisions by security institutions and defines the parameters within which neighbouring states are perceived.

Military Strike as Systemic Accelerator

A large-scale military strike on Iranian command infrastructure has occurred. Its defining feature is that the operation exceeded the “infrastructure strike” scenario: its principal result was the elimination of the Supreme Leader and several of the Islamic Republic’s senior commanders. This is not merely damage to nuclear or energy facilities — it is a direct decapitation of the regime’s command hierarchy. Holding this distinction is essential for understanding what follows.

The paradox is well-documented: a strike would likely produce short-term consolidation around the regime — external threat historically suppresses internal dissent — but its medium-term consequences are qualitatively different.(Keddie, 2006; International Crisis Group, 2024) Infrastructure destruction would accelerate functional fragmentation: disrupting logistics, undermining financial flows, and creating zones of reduced state presence on the periphery, particularly in ethnically heterogeneous border regions. The regime would simultaneously gain a powerful narrative resource — the “besieged fortress” acquires material confirmation(Fars News, 2026) — but this resource operates unevenly. For communities where the external-threat narrative no longer generates loyalty, a strike becomes not a consolidating but a radicalising force. The result is polarisation, sharpest on the peripheries. Information blockade intensifies, yet precisely in these moments alternative narratives — transmitted by diaspora networks, regional actors, and external players — find their largest audiences.(BBC Persian, 2026; Iran International, 2026) Cognitive fragmentation does not dissipate; it migrates to informal channels and ethnic networks, becoming less visible but no less real.

Peripheries and Uneven Statehood

Iran is a multi-ethnic state in which Persians constitute approximately half the population. Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, Khuzestani Arabs, and Northeastern Turkmen are each embedded in Iranian statehood differently, with varying degrees of loyalty, autonomy, and historical memory of centre-periphery relations.(Keddie, 2006; Dabashi, 2011) Two symmetric analytical errors must be avoided: ignoring the ethnic dimension as irrelevant, or reducing complex political dynamics to separatism. Most peripheral movements seek expanded autonomy and recognition rather than independent statehood.(International Crisis Group, 2024) The strategic point is different: under the pressure of military strikes and institutional overload, the centre finds it objectively harder to hold the administrative perimeter — not because peripheries rebel, but because governance resources are redistributed toward the capital and key security nodes. Zones of reduced statehood emerge, immediately attracting external actors. These zones are precisely the point of articulation between the Iranian crisis and the post-Soviet security arc. Institutional erosion precedes visible collapse — and peripheries, as a rule, feel it first.

Why the Post-Soviet Arc — Not Only the Middle East

The conventional analytical reflex is to situate the Iranian crisis within the Middle Eastern security system. This is historically understandable but strategically insufficient. Iran functions as the southern hinge of Eurasian security: its territory, corridors, ethnic networks, and information flows link the Middle East with the South Caucasus and Central Asia in a single interdependent system.(Vakil, 2020; International Crisis Group, 2024) Instability south of the Caucasus reverberates northward — not by the laws of geographic adjacency, but by the logic of network connectivity.

The South Caucasus: First Receiver

Azerbaijan occupies a particular position in this configuration. The country shares over 700 kilometres of border with Iran, is a secular Turkic-speaking state with a documented Israeli defence-technology presence, (Asgarov, 2024; Inbar, 2018) and has therefore long been a central element of Iranian threat narratives. Iranian state-aligned sources consistently frame Baku as a staging ground for Israeli and American influence. (Tasnim, 2021; Iran International, 2022) The analytical distinction is crucial: this concerns perception and its strategic consequences, not the verification of specific operational facts. The structural contrast between a secular Turkic state and an Islamic republic arises independently of Baku’s political intentions — but it feeds Iranian anxiety and generates real tension dynamics.(Cornell, 2017) Iranian military exercises near the Azerbaijani border, diplomatic protests over Israeli presence, and encirclement rhetoric are not propaganda but elements of a real strategic logic built around a threat narrative.(Reuters, 2021)

In the event of large-scale strikes and peripheral destabilisation, northwestern Iran — predominantly Azerbaijani-populated — becomes a zone of heightened sensitivity: not as a separatist flashpoint, but as a space where administrative failures, information warfare, and ethnic identity intersect most densely. For Baku this creates simultaneous risks — border instability, migration pressure, provocations — and strategic dilemmas about conflict positioning.(de Waal, 2013; Cornell, 2017) Armenia, though asymmetrically positioned, is embedded in the same dynamics: Iran has traditionally viewed it as a counterweight to the Azerbaijani-Turkish influence corridor, and destabilization reconfigures that calculus while deepening Yerevan’s own geopolitical uncertainty.(de Waal, 2013) Georgia, less directly affected geographically, nonetheless hosts key transit corridors whose strategic value rises sharply under regional disruption.

Central Asia: Second Receiver

Central Asia is connected to Iran less visibly but no less structurally, through three channels. The first is transit-logistical: Iran is a critical element of Eurasian transit routes, including the North-South Corridor. Its destabilisation — and still more the destruction of infrastructure in the course of military operations — forces Central Asian states to urgently reorient commodity and energy flows, deepening dependence on alternative routes and creating conditions for the criminalisation of transit.(Al-Monitor, 2021) The second is identity-informational: Turkmenistan borders Iran; substantial populations in western Afghanistan are Persian-speaking; Islamic networks historically linked to the Iranian space are present across the region. In conditions of Iranian crisis these networks become conduits simultaneously for migration flows, information campaigns, and potential radicalisation.(Pew Research Center, 2017) The Turkic factor is ambivalent: it creates cultural distance from the Iranian narrative while simultaneously making Central Asian societies targets of competing information operations. The third channel is security: the weakening of Iranian border control creates openings for opportunistic actors — arms smuggling, narcotics trafficking, non-state armed groups — adding a western vector of risk to states already under pressure from Afghan instability.(International Crisis Group, 2024)

Major Powers: Interests and Limits

Russia occupies a structurally contradictory position: controlled instability on its southern flank has historically served Russian interests as a lever against post-Soviet states and a constraint on Western penetration,(Vakil, 2020) but uncontrolled turbulence near Caucasian corridors and Central Asian markets represents a direct threat — the more acute given Russia’s own strategic overextension on the Ukrainian front. Turkey operates simultaneously in competition and pragmatic cooperation: the Turkic vector creates structural rivalry with Iranian regional presence, but Ankara’s instruments of direct influence are limited. China is guided above all by corridor stability: Iran is an element of the Belt and Road Initiative, and its destabilisation directly threatens Chinese energy and infrastructure investments.(CSIS, 2020) All three powers share one characteristic: none possesses instruments sufficient to manage full-scale Iranian destabilisation. Post-Soviet states will face the crisis amid competing external agendas and no single stabilising actor.

Scenario Matrix

Scenario analysis here is not futurology. Its purpose is to identify which risk configurations are already active, by what mechanisms they are unfolding, and what consequences they are producing for the post-Soviet security arc. All three scenarios below should be read not as alternative futures but as simultaneously activated tracks of a single crisis process: the operation has set them in parallel motion, and the central question is which will prove dominant.

Scenario A: “Contained Turbulence”

The regime withstands the combination of external pressure and internal protest. The IRGC retains operational control over key institutions; a military strike, if it occurs, damages infrastructure but does not break the command hierarchy. Territorial integrity formally holds — but “containment” here is not stability in the conventional sense. It is a state of chronic tension in which institutional erosion continues, simply more slowly than in other scenarios.(Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020) For the post-Soviet arc: the South Caucasus experiences the scenario primarily through information pressure — Iranian encirclement narratives intensify, provoking diplomatic tension with Azerbaijan and creating conditions for border incidents.(Reuters, 2021; Tasnim, 2026) Central Asia faces moderate growth in smuggling flows and grey logistics chains. Major powers maintain a wait-and-see posture. Cognitive fragmentation within Iran deepens but remains latent. The key risk of Scenario A is its temporal instability: contained turbulence tends toward self-reinforcement. Each repression cycle narrows the loyalty base and expands zones where state presence becomes nominal. Scenario A is not an equilibrium — it is a trajectory.

Scenario B: “Institutional Dual Power”

Under the pressure of external escalation and internal shocks, the unity of the Iranian state machine fractures. The IRGC and formal government structures increasingly fail to act as a single organism — competing centres of decision-making emerge with different strategic horizons and different thresholds of acceptable compromise.(Financial Times, 2025; Brookings Institution, 2023) The state remains legally unified but operationally divided. Crucially, this institutional erosion precedes any visible territorial change and is therefore harder to diagnose from the outside — external actors continue to engage with “the Iranian state” as a unitary actor while dual power logic already operates within it. For the South Caucasus: Azerbaijan faces a particular dilemma — Iranian security structures may act incoherently, generating incidents unsanctioned by the formal government.(Cornell, 2017; Asgarov, 2024) Armenia loses a predictable interlocutor in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, whose actual negotiating leverage collapses in conditions of dual power. For Central Asia: the scenario means above all the growth of grey zones — spaces in which no competing Iranian authority exercises effective control, immediately colonised by non-state actors.(International Crisis Group, 2024) Russia, Turkey, and China begin building parallel influence channels bypassing formal state structures, further accelerating institutional disintegration. Competing Iranian power centres inevitably produce competing narratives — and this informational dual power is exported outward. Post-Soviet societies, familiar with the logic of state narrative and its managed deformation, prove relatively receptive to this export.(Al-Monitor, 2026; Iran International, 2026)

Scenario C: “Peripheral Fragmentation”

Large-scale military strikes and the accompanying institutional overload result in the centre de facto losing effective control over a number of peripheral regions. This is not proclaimed independence or armed separatism in the classical sense — it is a governance vacuum immediately filled by external actors, ethnic networks, and non-state armed formations.(Dabashi, 2011; International Crisis Group, 2024) Instability diffuses across regional networks without requiring direct territorial breach. This is the most destructive scenario for the post-Soviet arc — and therefore the least desirable for all major regional players, including those who might extract short-term tactical advantages from Iranian weakness. For the South Caucasus: a migration shock and a sharp intensification of border incidents. Azerbaijan faces pressure from northwestern Iran in the form of displaced persons flows and attempts by external actors to use the Azerbaijani-Iranian borderland as an operational space.(Cornell, 2017; de Waal, 2013) Armenia and Georgia face emergency restructuring of transit routes and border security mechanisms. For Central Asia: direct risk of weapons proliferation and armed non-state actor activity along the western vector, compounding existing pressure from the Afghan direction.(Brookings Institution, 2023; International Crisis Group, 2024) None of the major powers — Russia, Turkey, China — possesses instruments sufficient to stabilise peripheral Iranian fragmentation. Post-Soviet states will confront the crisis amid competing external agendas, without a single stabilising actor and without institutional mechanisms for collective response. Cognitive fragmentation in Scenario C reaches its logical limit: competing narratives about “what is happening in Iran” become an independent destabilising factor, creating mutually incompatible pictures of reality among actors who must coordinate their crisis response. The informational gap between them becomes a strategic vulnerability.

Implications for Israel and Western Actors

Israeli strategic discourse traditionally frames the Iranian threat through the lens of the nuclear programme, ballistic missiles, and proxy networks in the Middle East. This is warranted — but insufficient. The post-Soviet security arc represents a distinct and underappreciated dimension of Israeli strategic interests.(Rubin, 2022; Eisenstadt, 2021) The South Caucasus is not a periphery but a “screen”: the space through which Iranian instability is transmitted into the Eurasian system, and simultaneously a corridor through which risks can travel in both directions. Israel’s defence-technology presence in Azerbaijan — a well-documented fact(Asgarov, 2024; Inbar, 2018) — is already an element of this calculus. Under conditions of large-scale Iranian destabilisation, the stakes of that presence rise sharply: it ceases to be an instrument of bilateral relations and becomes a variable in the broader Eurasian security equation. The Iranian regime has already built a narrative in which Israeli presence in Azerbaijan is an element of strategic encirclement — and acts accordingly. Any Israeli moves in the region, regardless of their actual purpose, will be interpreted by Tehran through this frame and produce corresponding behavioural consequences.(Vakil, 2020)

Four Monitoring Priorities

For Israel and Western analytical structures, Iranian destabilisation poses specific early-warning tasks that extend beyond the traditional Middle Eastern perimeter. First: border corridors and their transformation. The weakening of Iranian border control immediately affects the configuration of arms-smuggling routes, narcotics trafficking, and non-state armed group movement — historically running through the Azerbaijani-Iranian and Turkmen-Iranian borderlands.(International Crisis Group, 2024; CSIS, 2020) Second: information operations. The post-Soviet information space is already an arena of competing narrative campaigns. Iranian state media, diaspora networks, and external players simultaneously work with audiences in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Central Asia, constructing incompatible pictures of events.(Al-Monitor, 2026; Iran International, 2026; Fars News, 2026) Monitoring these campaigns is not a secondary analytical task: cognitive fragmentation precedes political fragmentation, and its early diagnosis identifies points of institutional stress before they become visible at the material level. Third: diplomatic signals between regional actors. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, and Central Asian states are already probing each other’s positions with heightened intensity. Tracking these signals — including what is deliberately left unsaid — yields a more accurate picture of real strategic calculations than official declarations.(Cornell, 2017; de Waal, 2013) Fourth: proxy-structure activity. Institutional dual power within Iran, if it materialises, will inevitably be reflected in the behaviour of IRGC-affiliated structures beyond Iranian borders — their activation or, conversely, their disorientation in a crisis period is an indicator of fragmentation depth and an independent regional destabilizing factor.(Financial Times, 2025)

A final analytical note: the purpose of this analysis is risk comprehension, not its instrumentalization. A scenario of Iranian fragmentation is not strategically advantageous for any regional actor in the medium term, including those who might extract short-term tactical gains. Israel has an interest in eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat — but not in generating an unmanageable arc of instability to the north and east of its direct sphere of interest.(Rubin, 2022; Eisenstadt, 2021) The structural contrast between different models of statehood in the region arises independently of anyone’s intentions — but how it is managed in a crisis period is determined by the quality of analytical preparation and the timeliness of strategic planning.

Conclusion: The Eurasian Arc as a Unified Risk System

Fragmentation does not begin with the collapse of borders — it begins in the cognitive domain. Competing narratives undermine state coherence before this becomes visible at the institutional or territorial level. Iran is no exception: informational dual power, the gap between the official picture of reality and that formed by peripheral communities and ethnic networks, is already a form of fragmentation, even if no border has yet changed.(Dabashi, 2011; Vakil, 2020; BBC Persian, 2026)

The analytical horizon of this article is therefore deliberately broader than the question of whether Iran will break up. Fragmentation is a process rather than an event: institutional erosion precedes visible collapse, threat perception shapes strategic behaviour more precisely than the actual balance of forces, and instability travels through economic and informational networks long before it acquires territorial expression.(Keddie, 2006; International Crisis Group, 2024) The mere possibility of fragmentation already changes the behaviour of actors — and this change must be tracked and analyzed regardless of which of the three scenarios materializes.

Iran functions as the southern hinge of Eurasian security — and it is precisely this that makes its internal dynamics strategically significant for the post-Soviet space. The South Caucasus and Central Asia are not external to the Iranian crisis: they are embedded in the same arc of risk, connected to it through border corridors, transit routes, ethnic networks, and information flows.(Vakil, 2020; Cornell, 2017; Al-Monitor, 2021) Instability south of the Caucasus reverberates northward — not by the laws of geographic adjacency, but by the logic of network connectivity that recognises no administrative boundaries.

The structural contrast between different models of statehood in the region — secular and theocratic, Turkic and Persian, Western-integrated and autonomy-seeking — arises independently of the political intentions of specific actors.(Cornell, 2017; de Waal, 2013; Asgarov, 2024) This contrast feeds Iranian threat perception, generates encirclement narratives, and produces real geopolitical consequences regardless of its factual accuracy. Threat perception frequently precedes strategic adaptation — and it is precisely for this reason that monitoring narrative dynamics is not an auxiliary but a central analytical task.

The question for strategists in Jerusalem, Washington, Brussels, and the capitals of post-Soviet states is not whether Iran will fragment. It is whether they are prepared for a world in which the very logic of its possible fragmentation is already quietly reshaping the Eurasian security arc — through networks, through narratives, through corridors — before it becomes apparent to those accustomed to responding to events rather than to processes.(Rubin, 2022; Brookings Institution, 2023; Financial Times, 2025)

Bibliography

Academic and Scholarly Sources

Cornell, Svante E. Azerbaijan Since Independence. London: Routledge, 2017.

Dabashi, Hamid. Iran: A People Interrupted. New York: The New Press, 2011.

de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: NYU Press, 2013.

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Vakil, Sanam. Iran and the Global Order: Aspiration and Constraints. London: Chatham House, 2020.

Asgarov, Shahin. “Azerbaijan–Israel Relations and Regional Security Dynamics.” Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2024.

Think Tanks and Policy Research

Brookings Institution. Iran Protests and the Crisis of Regime Legitimacy. Washington, DC, 2023.

CSIS. The Air and Missile War in Nagorno-Karabakh: Lessons for the Future of Warfare. Washington, DC, 2020.

International Crisis Group. Iran’s Domestic Unrest and Regional Implications. Brussels, 2024.

Rubin, Uzi. Missiles, Drones, and Deterrence: Israel’s Strategic Environment Beyond the Middle East. INSS Strategic Assessment, 2022.

Eisenstadt, Michael. The Nagorno-Karabakh War and Its Implications for the Middle East. INSS, 2021.

Inbar, Efraim. Israel–Azerbaijan Relations and the Iranian Factor. BESA Center, 2018.

Financial Times. “The Expanding Role of the IRGC in Iran’s Strategic Decision-Making.” 2025.

Media Sources

Al-Monitor. “Why Iran Sees Israel Behind Domestic Unrest.” 2026.

Al-Monitor (Turkey Desk). “Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Changing Security Architecture of the South Caucasus.” 2021.

BBC Persian. “Iran’s Protests and the Limits of Repression.” 2026.

Iran International. “Tehran’s Accusations and the Azerbaijan–Israel Factor.” 2022.

Iran International. “Iranian Officials Blame Israel for Unrest Amid Protests.” 2026.

Reuters. “Iran Warns Against Israeli Presence Near Its Borders.” 2021.

Reuters. “Iran Faces Its Most Serious Internal Protests in Decades.” 2026.

Iranian Sources (cited as narrative illustration)

Fars News Agency. 「Naqsh-e Esra’il dar Bi-Sabat-sazi-ye Piroumun-e Iran」 [The Role of Israel in Destabilising Iran’s Periphery]. Tehran, 2026.

Mashregh News. 「Azarbaijan, Esra’il va Mo’adelat-e Jadid-e Amniyati dar Shomal-e Iran」 [Azerbaijan, Israel, and the New Security Equations on Iran’s Northern Frontier]. Tehran, 2022.

Tasnim News Agency. 「Chalesh-ha-ye Amniyati-ye Iran dar Marzha-ye Shomali」 [Iran’s Security Challenges on Its Northern Borders]. Tehran, 2026.

Tasnim News Agency. 「Nafuz-e Rezhim-e Sahyunisti dar Qafqaz」 [Zionist Regime Influence in the Caucasus and Security Threats to Iran]. Tehran, 2021.

Demographic and Social Data

Pew Research Center. Religious Belief and National Identity in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington, DC, 2017.

Gershon Kogan, PhD, an Israel-based expert in Iranian politics, strategic culture, and Middle Eastern security. He contributes expert analysis to the media, and writes independently on Iranian and regional affairs

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 187 (March 7, 2026)

The Iranian regime is making desperate efforts to draw as many countries as possible into the war. This strategic calculation pursues several objectives. Even before the outbreak of hostilities, Tehran had warned that it would strike American bases in neighboring states and issued threatening statements toward all countries it deemed hostile. Consequently, from the very beginning of the war against the Iranian regime, these countries—including Azerbaijan—adopted a neutral stance and declared that they would in no way participate in combat operations. According to a report from the mouthpiece of French intelligence services (Intelligence Online, March 5, 2026), “at the start of the Israeli-US offensive, President Ilham Aliyev and the head of foreign intelligence, Orkhan Soultanov, sent a message to Tehran and Tel Aviv asking both governments to keep it out of the war.”

Despite this, the Iranian regime fulfilled its threat and, from the first day, began shelling American military bases in Arab countries with missiles and drones. Oil industry facilities also came under attack. However, Tehran decided not to limit itself to this. Soon afterward, strikes were launched against Cyprus, which is located very far from Iran and has no American bases whatsoever. Cyprus hosts a British base, but the British declared neutrality from the first minute and stated that they would not provide the United States with their base in the Indian Ocean for attacks on Iran. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Tehran from attacking them as well.

Iranian propaganda has threatened Azerbaijan for years. The Iranian regime has accused its neighboring country of cooperating with Israel and the United States, as well as of fomenting pan-Turkic sentiments among the Turkic-speaking population of Iran, which constitutes more than a quarter of the country’s inhabitants. Nevertheless, unlike the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, there are no American—or indeed any other foreign—military bases on the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Moreover, Azerbaijan has strictly adhered to neutrality toward Iran and has not permitted the use of its territory for strikes against the Islamic Republic. President Ilham Aliyev expressed condolences over the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the bombing on February 28. The Azerbaijani leader called for restraint and de-escalation of tensions. Therefore, the Iranian regime had no real grounds—not even tenuous ones comparable to those for the attack on Cyprus—for assaulting its northern neighbor.

Nevertheless, on the morning of March 5, several drones entered Azerbaijani airspace from Iran. A strike was carried out at Nakhchivan International Airport. Another drone struck a school in the village of Shekerabad, approximately ten kilometers from the border. As a result of these incidents, four people were injured. One drone was shot down.

Azerbaijan’s response was immediate. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Iranian Ambassador Mojtaba Demirchilu to deliver a note of protest. Baku announced the closure of the border to Iranian cargo and the recall of diplomats from Tehran and Tabriz. Turkey, Azerbaijan’s strategic partner, immediately expressed solidarity and declared support for the country in the face of Iranian aggression. Israel and Arab countries condemned the strike on Nakhchivan. Pakistan, a nuclear power, also expressed solidarity and support.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council. He described the Iranian attack as a “terrorist act” and accused the Iranian regime of black ingratitude: the strike occurred after Azerbaijan had agreed to provide gratuitous assistance to Iran in evacuating diplomatic personnel from Lebanon. The head of state stated that those who test his country’s resilience would face a crushing response. The Azerbaijani Armed Forces are at maximum readiness.

Upon witnessing such a sharp reaction, the Iranian government hastened to declare that Iran had not struck Azerbaijan. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that the Iranian armed forces had no intention of attacking countries that were in no way participating in the war and were not providing bases for attacks on Iran.

At the same time, Iranian propaganda is actively promoting the version that the strikes on Azerbaijan were carried out by Israel or the United States and that the drones themselves were of Azerbaijani production—although the drones were identified as Iranian, of the Arash-2 type.

But this entire official line is undermined by the IRGC, which, through its media resources, claimed responsibility for the attack on Azerbaijan and threatened that it would not stop there.

The day after the drone strikes, on March 6, Azerbaijan’s security service reported the detention of members of a terrorist cell formed by IRGC for carrying out terrorist attacks against the Israeli embassy in Baku, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and Jewish sites in the country.

It can be assumed that the IRGC is acting independently, without consulting the political echelon. Prior to the war, information emerged that, following the 12-day campaign in the summer of 2025, Iranian leadership had taken measures to decentralize command. Furthermore, the Iranian leadership granted the IRGC a de facto unrestricted authority to wage war and complete autonomy in making military decisions. Indeed, IRGC generals could have acted independently of the government’s opinion and attacked Azerbaijan based on their plans. This, of course, in no way exonerates the Iranian regime but merely underscores its terrorist nature.

The further development of events will depend on whether this Iranian strike on Azerbaijan remains an isolated incident or is followed by other similar provocations.

Iran’s strikes on neighboring countries pursue several goals at once. First, Tehran hopes to drive up oil prices to such an extent that gasoline becomes significantly more expensive in the United States. This would create domestic tension and fuel anti-war sentiments in America. Secondly, Tehran seeks to destabilize the situation in Arab countries, thereby compelling their governments to implore, beg, or demand that the United States cease the war. Third, a strike on Azerbaijan forces a restriction of the already narrow airspace corridor through which air traffic between East and West continues—Azerbaijan fears that, in the event of repeated attacks, passenger airliners could be harmed, either by drones or by air defense fire.

However, there is another, less obvious calculation to consider. The Iranian regime is strongly hoping to draw Arab countries into the war. If they join the United States and Israel and begin striking Iran, this would most likely trigger a surge of patriotism and allow the regime to bolster popular support, which has been rapidly eroding in recent years.

By inciting Azerbaijan, and consequently Turkey, the regime is initiating a riskier strategy. Yes, there is an economic component: a strike on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline would further drive up oil prices, threaten Israel’s energy security, and complicate the situation in Turkey. In addition, it creates a threat to the “Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity” project through the Zangezur Corridor. But this remains a secondary objective.

The primary goal of the provocations is most likely to compel Turkey and Azerbaijan to launch strikes or even invade Iran to create buffer zones. If such a scenario materializes, Tehran would immediately speak of a threat to territorial integrity. In essence, the Iranian regime hopes that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ilham Aliyev will play the role for it that Saddam Hussein played in 1980. When the well-armed Iraqi army invaded Iran, virtually all Iranians united around Khomeini, even though it had already become clear what kind of regime this was—one that had unleashed mass repressions immediately after coming to power. Nevertheless, the threat to the homeland compelled Iranians to rally under the banners of the Islamic Republic. Largely thanks to that war, the regime was able to consolidate popular support and ensure legitimacy for several decades.

But today this calculation could yield a completely different result. Iran’s Azerbaijanis, weary of the failed regime, are unlikely to have greeted news of the strikes on Nakhchivan with enthusiasm. Despite all the propaganda against the Republic of Azerbaijan, it regards its neighboring country with sympathy. Moreover, the Azerbaijani army, though not the most numerous, possesses serious combat experience and is well-equipped. Under conditions of total American-Israeli air dominance, the IRGC will have nothing to oppose such an adversary, which could lead to significant losses for Iran in a military engagement. Thus, a direct military confrontation with Azerbaijan could become a catastrophe for Iran.

Nevertheless, such a confrontation remains highly unlikely. It is evident that the Iranian regime, after the elimination of Khamenei and a large number of generals, has fallen into despair and is employing all means at its disposal. The methodical destruction of military facilities only intensifies its despair, prompting attempts to provoke neighbors into rash actions in the hope of bolstering its position. Baku knows this and is unlikely to yield to these provocations, even if the strikes recur.

The example of the UAE may be instructive here. Iranian strikes have consistently targeted the Emirates since February 28. However, in response, the UAE chose not to enter the war but to freeze Iranian financial assets. Azerbaijan, too, can quite feasibly find a way to respond to the Iranian regime’s provocations without direct military confrontation.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 181 (January 30, 2026)

By Gershon Kogan, PhD, Orientalist, Specialist in Iranian Studies

Introduction: Framing the Problem

In recent analyses of the post-Soviet space, a persistent analytical gap remains between how Israeli–Azerbaijani relations are typically described and how they are perceived in Tehran. Most studies portray this partnership as pragmatic and transactional, largely confined to military-technical cooperation and limited in its implications for regional security beyond the South Caucasus (Cornell, 2017; de Waal, 2013). Yet such interpretations fail to explain the intensity and persistence of Iranian strategic anxiety toward Azerbaijan’s cooperation with Israel.

The core problem lies in the tendency to marginalize Iranian strategic logic, reducing Tehran’s reactions either to rhetorical exaggeration or to attempts at instrumentalizing external threats for domestic mobilization (Dabashi, 2011; Vakil, 2020). This approach leaves unanswered a key question: why Azerbaijan — rather than Turkey, Georgia, or the states of Central Asia — has come to occupy a particularly sensitive place in Iran’s threat perception, and why developments in the South Caucasus generate reactions in Tehran disproportionate to the region’s formal geopolitical weight.

An additional dimension often overlooked in Western and post-Soviet analyses is Iran’s historically ambivalent perception of the post-Soviet space itself. For much of the 1990s and 2000s, this region was viewed in Tehran as a secondary and relatively inert strategic environment — fragmented, inward-looking, and largely insulated from Middle Eastern security dynamics (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020). The South Caucasus, in particular, was not perceived as a primary arena of confrontation but rather as a buffer zone shaped predominantly by Russian influence. The gradual erosion of this perception — driven by technological diffusion, expanding Israeli activity beyond the Middle East, and the growing permeability between Eurasian and Middle Eastern security theaters — has transformed the post-Soviet space from a strategic periphery into a zone of increasing uncertainty in Iranian threat assessments (Inbar, 2018; Rubin, 2022).

This analytical blind spot became especially evident after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. While the conflict is often interpreted primarily through the prism of Russian and Turkish influence (de Waal, 2013; Cornell, 2017), its outcome exposed vulnerabilities in what Tehran had long regarded as part of its northern strategic buffer. The widespread use of Israeli military technologies by Azerbaijan did not merely alter the tactical balance on the battlefield; it disrupted a regional status quo that Iran had implicitly incorporated into its security calculus (Fars News, 2020; Tasnim, 2021; Eisenstadt, 2021).

The salience of this shift has been amplified by Iran’s internal crisis. Mass protests over recent years have undermined assumptions about regime stability and heightened elite sensitivity to external reference points — particularly those emerging from culturally proximate societies (Reuters, 2026; BBC Persian, 2026; Brookings Institution, 2023). In this context, Azerbaijan is no longer perceived in Tehran simply as a neighboring state or a junior partner of Turkey, but increasingly as a structurally inconvenient reference point: a secular polity rooted in a historically Shi‘ite cultural space, open to global connectivity and maintaining stable cooperation with Israel.

This article argues that without incorporating the Iranian perspective, it is impossible to fully understand either the resilience of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation or its broader implications for regional security. It seeks to explain why Azerbaijan has emerged as a focal point of Iranian strategic anxiety, how Israeli involvement in the South Caucasus reshapes Iran’s northern security perimeter, and why Iran’s domestic turbulence magnifies the significance of these developments across the post-Soviet space.

Why Israel Chose Azerbaijan

Prevailing explanations of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation typically emphasize three factors: Azerbaijan’s financial capacity to purchase advanced weaponry, Israel’s interest in expanding partnerships within the Muslim world, and tactical convergence in security interests (Asgarov, 2024). While each of these elements is relevant, none adequately explains why Azerbaijan — rather than other post-Soviet states — became Israel’s most consequential partner in the South Caucasus.

The limitation of these interpretations lies in their tendency to detach the partnership from the Iranian factor. In reality, Iran — rather than Caucasian regional dynamics per se — constitutes the central variable in Israel’s strategic calculus. Since the early 2000s, Israel has sought to expand its strategic depth vis-à-vis Iran through indirect means, extending pressure beyond the Middle Eastern theater (Inbar, 2018; Rubin, 2022). Within this framework, the South Caucasus acquired significance not as an autonomous region but as part of Iran’s northern security perimeter.

From this perspective, Azerbaijan presents a unique constellation of attributes. Unlike Georgia, which lacks a direct border with Iran, and Armenia, which has traditionally maintained cooperative relations with Tehran, Azerbaijan combines a long land border with Iran, relative autonomy from Russian control mechanisms, a secular political system, and a demonstrated willingness to engage in discreet security cooperation (Cornell, 2017; Inbar, 2018). These features render Azerbaijan a particularly effective entry point for Israeli engagement along Iran’s northern frontier.

Crucially, this engagement does not take the form of overt military basing or formal alliance structures. Israeli strategy in Azerbaijan remains deliberately low-profile, relying on arms transfers, intelligence cooperation, and long-term technological interdependence in the security sector (Rubin, 2022). This approach minimizes political costs for both parties while generating a persistent sense of strategic uncertainty in Tehran — an effect arguably more destabilizing than explicit military presence, particularly under conditions of domestic stress within Iran.

Military Reality: Drones, Intelligence and the Karabakh Shift

In much of the post-Soviet literature, Nagorno-Karabakh has long been framed as a lever of Russian influence — a mechanism for maintaining controlled instability and disciplining Armenia (de Waal, 2013; Cornell, 2017). While this interpretation captures an important dimension of Moscow’s policy, it does not account for Iran’s reaction to the outcome of the 2020 war.

For Tehran, Karabakh functioned less as an arena of great-power rivalry than as a component of its northern security buffer, maintaining spatial separation between the Turkish–Azerbaijani axis and Iran’s borders (Fars News, 2020). The persistence of Armenian control over much of the territory, and the absence of a direct land corridor between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, objectively aligned with Iranian interests, even in the absence of a formal alliance with Yerevan.

The Azerbaijani victory therefore represented, from Iran’s perspective, not merely a regional realignment but a qualitative shift in its northern security environment (Tasnim, 2021; Mashregh News, 2022). This perception was driven less by the territorial outcome than by the technological character of the war. The extensive use of unmanned aerial systems — including Israeli loitering munitions such as the Harop and tactical UAVs from the Orbiter family — exposed the vulnerability of traditional air defense and static fortifications (CSIS, 2020; Military Strategy Magazine, 2021; Eisenstadt, 2021).

For Iranian military analysts, Karabakh offered a concrete demonstration of how Israeli technologies could reshape strategic realities beyond the Middle East without direct Israeli military involvement. This experience was interpreted not as an anomaly but as a precedent, prompting Iranian media close to the IRGC to frame the conflict as a warning regarding the exposure of Iran’s northern flank (Tasnim, 2021; Mashregh News, 2022).

Beyond media framing, the Karabakh war triggered a more substantive reassessment within Iranian military and security circles. Commentaries affiliated with the IRGC emphasized not only the tactical effectiveness of unmanned systems but also their strategic implications for Iran’s own defense posture, particularly regarding the vulnerability of fixed air-defense installations and critical infrastructure in border regions (Tasnim, 2021; Mashregh News, 2022). The conflict reinforced existing concerns within Iran’s security establishment about asymmetric exposure to technologically superior adversaries operating indirectly through regional partners. Israeli assessments of the war, which highlighted the scalability and adaptability of drone-based warfare beyond the Caucasus, further amplified these anxieties by implicitly situating Iran as a potential future theater for similar operational concepts (Eisenstadt, 2021; CSIS, 2020). In this sense, Karabakh was interpreted in Tehran less as a concluded regional episode than as a rehearsal for emerging modes of conflict increasingly relevant to Iran’s strategic environment.

Azerbaijan as a Structurally Inconvenient Reference Point

The military dimension alone does not fully explain Azerbaijan’s prominence in Iranian strategic thinking. Equally important is the symbolic and ideological dimension, which has become increasingly salient amid Iran’s deepening domestic crisis.

Analytical precision is essential here. Azerbaijan is neither a religious state nor a “Shi‘ite state” in any institutional or political sense. Decades of Soviet rule followed by post-Soviet secular governance have produced a deeply secularized society, where religious practice remains limited and largely cultural rather than doctrinal (Pew Research Center, 2017). Islam — including the Shi‘ite tradition — functions primarily as an element of historical and symbolic identity, not as a foundation of political authority or legal order.

It is precisely this configuration that renders Azerbaijan symbolically sensitive for Tehran. The coexistence of a historically Shi‘ite cultural matrix with a secular political system that is externally connected and strategically pragmatic challenges one of the Islamic Republic’s core legitimizing narratives: the presumed inseparability of Shi‘ite identity from Islamic governance and clerical authority (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020). In this sense, Azerbaijan does not constitute a normative or aspirational “model” for Iran. Rather, it functions as a structurally inconvenient reference point — demonstrating that alternative political trajectories within a shared cultural and confessional space are empirically possible.

Crucially, Azerbaijan does not actively project itself as an ideological or civilizational alternative to Iran, nor does it seek to export its political system across borders. Its symbolic significance for Tehran arises not from intentional competition, but from structural contrast. The absence of revolutionary ideology, combined with a pragmatic foreign policy and selective security partnerships, produces an implicit comparison that operates independently of Baku’s intentions (Cornell, 2017; Al-Monitor, 2021). This dynamic underscores the largely involuntary nature of Azerbaijan’s role in Iranian strategic imagination: it is not the product of ideological confrontation, but a byproduct of regional transformation in which proximity, cultural familiarity, and divergent political paths intersect in ways that destabilize established narratives.

Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation further intensifies this symbolic dissonance. The stability and functional pragmatism of Baku’s relationship with Israel undermine one of the Islamic Republic’s central ideological claims — namely, the assumed incompatibility between Shi‘ite societies and the Jewish state (Inbar, 2018; Tasnim, 2021). In a period marked by internal legitimacy erosion, such contradictions acquire disproportionate psychological and political weight, amplifying regime sensitivity to external reference points that complicate binary ideological frameworks (Brookings Institution, 2023).

At the same time, this role is not cost-free for Azerbaijan. Close cooperation with Israel increases Baku’s exposure to regional escalation dynamics and complicates its long-standing balancing strategy vis-à-vis Iran. Heightened Iranian suspicion constrains diplomatic maneuverability and introduces persistent security risks that Azerbaijan must manage rather than eliminate (Al-Monitor, 2021). This underscores an important corrective to overly celebratory readings of the relationship: Azerbaijan’s position as a structurally inconvenient reference point is not a strategic objective, but a condition imposed by geography, history, and regional realignment.

Iran’s Internal Crisis and the Construction of External Threats

Iran’s domestic turmoil fundamentally reshapes the context in which external threats are perceived. Recent waves of mass protests have undermined the regime’s narrative of social consensus and exposed the limitations of repression as a universally effective governing tool (Reuters, 2026; BBC Persian, 2026).

Historically, the Islamic Republic has relied on the construction of external threats to consolidate internal cohesion and legitimize the expanding role of security institutions (Keddie, 2006). Under current conditions, however, this mechanism has become more rigid and less calibrated, increasingly dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the expense of diplomatic pragmatism and strategic nuance (Dabashi, 2011; Financial Times, 2025).

Within this framework, Israel functions as a convenient explanatory anchor for domestic unrest, largely independent of empirical substantiation (Iran International, 2026; Al-Monitor, 2026). Azerbaijan is incorporated into this narrative not as an autonomous regional actor, but as a spatial and symbolic extension of a perceived encircling hostile infrastructure. Iranian media and security discourse increasingly frame the South Caucasus — and Azerbaijan in particular — as a vulnerable northern corridor through which external influence, technological penetration, and ideological contamination might flow (Fars News, 2026; Tasnim, 2026). Azerbaijan’s cultural proximity makes it a particularly potent reference point, one that cannot be easily dismissed as part of an abstract or distant “West.”

Conclusion: Reassessing Iran’s Northern Calculus

Viewed through an Iranian lens, Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation reveals dynamics that remain obscured in conventional post-Soviet analyses. The 2020 Karabakh war demonstrated not only a shift in regional military balances but also the vulnerability of entrenched geopolitical arrangements to external technological intervention (CSIS, 2020; Eisenstadt, 2021).

Equally significant is the symbolic dimension. Azerbaijan’s trajectory — secular, historically embedded in Shi‘ite culture, and pragmatically engaged with Israel — challenges the ideological assumptions underpinning Iran’s political model (Vakil, 2020). Amid an internal legitimacy crisis, such external reference points acquire heightened strategic significance.

This anxiety does not imply an inevitable turn toward escalation. It coexists with pragmatic diplomacy and continued efforts to manage relations with Baku. Yet the divergence between Iran’s restrained external behavior and its increasingly securitized strategic imagination introduces long-term risks of misperception and miscalculation.

For Israel, cooperation with Azerbaijan does not guarantee regional stability. On the contrary, it introduces new variables into an already fragile security environment, reshaping threat perceptions and escalation dynamics beyond the Middle East (Rubin, 2022). Azerbaijan, in turn, must continuously balance the strategic benefits of this partnership against the diplomatic and security costs it entails.

Gershon Kogan is an Israeli-based researcher and analyst specializing in Iran and regional security, with a particular focus on the informational and cognitive dimensions of contemporary conflict. He holds a PhD in Iranian Studies from Moscow State University and combines academic training in philology with extensive professional experience in journalism and strategic communications. His research is grounded in systematic use of Persian-language primary sources and Iranian media.

Bibliography

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Cornell, Svante E. Azerbaijan Since Independence. London: Routledge, 2017.

• de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

• Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

• Vakil, Sanam. Iran and the Global Order: Aspiration and Constraints. London: Chatham House, 2020.

• Dabashi, Hamid. Iran: A People Interrupted. New York: The New Press, 2011.

• Asgarov, Shahin. “Azerbaijan–Israel Relations and Regional Security Dynamics.” Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2024.

Think Tanks and Policy Research (English)

• Brookings Institution. Iran Protests and the Crisis of Regime Legitimacy. Washington, DC, 2023.

• Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The Air and Missile War in Nagorno-Karabakh: Lessons for the Future of Warfare. Washington, DC, 2020.

• International Crisis Group. Iran’s Domestic Unrest and Regional Implications. Brussels, 2024.

• Military Strategy Magazine. Drones and the Transformation of Modern Conflict: The Karabakh Case. 2021.

• Financial Times. The Expanding Role of the IRGC in Iran’s Strategic Decision-Making. London, 2025.

Israeli Strategic Analysis (Hebrew)

(Cited to reflect Israeli strategic discourse and assessments rather than to introduce additional empirical data.)

• איזנשטט, מייקל.
  המלחמה בנגורנו-קרבאך והשלכותיה על המזרח התיכון
  [“The Nagorno-Karabakh War and Its Implications for the Middle East”].
  המכון למחקרי ביטחון לאומי (INSS), 2021.

• אינבר, אפרים.
  יחסי ישראל–אזרבייג׳ן והגורם האיראני
  [“Israel–Azerbaijan Relations and the Iranian Factor”].
  מרכז בגין–סאדאת למחקרים אסטרטגיים (BESA), 2018.

• Rubin, Uzi.
  Missiles, Drones, and Deterrence: Israel’s Strategic Environment Beyond the Middle East.
  INSS Strategic Assessment, 2022.

Iranian Media and Strategic Discourse (Persian)

(Persian-language sources are used to reconstruct Iranian threat perceptions and strategic discourse, not as neutral factual reporting.)

• تسنیم (Tasnim News Agency).
  «نفوذ رژیم صهیونیستی در قفقاز و تهدیدات امنیتی برای ایران»
  [“Zionist Regime Influence in the Caucasus and Security Threats to Iran”].
  Tehran, 2021.

• فارس (Fars News Agency).
  «جنگ قره‌باغ و پیامدهای آن برای امنیت ملی ایران»
  [“The Karabakh War and Its Implications for Iran’s National Security”].
  Tehran, 2020.

• مشرق نیوز (Mashregh News).
  «آذربایجان، اسرائیل و معادلات جدید امنیتی در شمال ایران»
  [“Azerbaijan, Israel, and the New Security Equations on Iran’s Northern Frontier”].
  Tehran, 2022.

• تسنیم (Tasnim News Agency).
  «چالش‌های امنیتی ایران در مرزهای شمالی»
  [“Iran’s Security Challenges on Its Northern Borders”].
  Tehran, 2026.

• فارس (Fars News Agency).
  «نقش اسرائیل در بی‌ثبات‌سازی پیرامون ایران»
  [“The Role of Israel in Destabilizing Iran’s Periphery”].
  Tehran, 2026.

Media and Analytical Journalism (English)

• Reuters. “Iran Warns Against Israeli Presence Near Its Borders.” 2021.

• Reuters. “Iran Faces Its Most Serious Internal Protests in Decades.” 2026.

• BBC Persian. “Iran’s Protests and the Limits of Repression.” 2026.

• Al-Monitor. “Why Iran Sees Israel Behind Domestic Unrest.” 2026.

• Iran International. “Tehran’s Accusations and the Azerbaijan–Israel Factor.” 2022.

• Iran International. “Iranian Officials Blame Israel for Unrest Amid Protests.” 2026.

Turkish / Regional Perspective

• Al-Monitor (Turkey Desk).
  “Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Changing Security Architecture of the South Caucasus.”
  Istanbul / Washington, 2021.

Religion, Society, and Demographics

• Pew Research Center.
  Religious Belief and National Identity in Central and Eastern Europe.
  Washington, DC, 2017.
  (Sections on Azerbaijan cited for analysis of secularization and cultural religion.)

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 180 (January 27, 2026)

At the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Iran was gripped by mass public protests unprecedented in recent decades both in scale and in the level of violence. They began as a reaction to the most severe economic and environmental crisis in the country’s history, which reached its peak by January 2026, but within a few days evolved into an anti-government political movement. At the time of writing, it is still impossible to determine whether the leaders and participants of the protests will succeed in overthrowing the fundamentalist regime of radical Shiite Islamists, or whether the authorities, as in the past, will manage to suppress the burgeoning revolutionary process.
What is already clear, however, is that the events unfolding in Iran directly affect not only the interests of the great powers—the United States, the EU, and China—but also several countries that are parties to conflicts in other regions, such as Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Position

In this context, the position of official Kyiv appears the most obvious and transparent, as it has unequivocally expressed support for Iran’s civil and political opposition. The reasons for this are clear. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Tehran has been one of Russia’s largest suppliers of weapons and military technologies, which Moscow has widely employed on the Ukrainian front.

Thus, according to U.S. government sources cited by Bloomberg, Iran has supplied Russia with ballistic and air-defense missiles worth around US$2.7 billion, which were used by the Russian army in its war against Ukraine. This included hundreds of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles, nearly 500 other short-range ballistic missiles, and around 200 surface-to-air missiles for air-defense systems. According to the same sources, Russian forces also received millions of rounds of ammunition and artillery shells, as well as Shahed-136 kamikaze drones and the transfer of technology to produce them on Russian territory under the name Geran-2, worth US$1.75 billion.

Accordingly, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, commenting on the mass protests in Iran, which he described as “effectively an uprising,” said that “these things won’t get easier for Russia.” He urged the international community “not [to] miss this moment when changes are possible,” since “every decent person on this planet,” in his words, “truly wants the people of Iran to finally free themselves from the current regime that has brought so much evil to Ukraine and to other countries.” That is why, Zelensky concluded, “every leader, every country, and international organizations must step in now and help the people remove those guilty of what Iran has sadly become.”

Judging by opinion polls, the Ukrainian leader’s view largely reflects public sentiment in Ukraine. Thus, in a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in July–August 2025—that is, several weeks after the end of the 12-day Iran–Israel war— 
42% of respondents said they supported Israel, and only 3% supported Iran. (Another 42% of those surveyed sympathized with neither side, and 13% were unable to answer the question.) The same trend was evident in an earlier KIIS survey conducted in early 2023, which showed that after the full-scale invasion—especially after Russia used lethal weapons supplied by Iran—64% supported Israel, while only 1% supported Iran, and 18% did not support either side.

This contrasted sharply with the institute’s survey in December 2021, conducted before the full-scale invasion, when 54% of respondents supported neither side, 28% supported Israel, and only 1% supported Iran. It also revealed a significant divergence from public opinion in Russia, where, according to Levada Center data, only 3% of respondents sympathized with Israel, while 25% sympathized with Iran and 53% with neither side.

Russia’s Position

As for official Moscow, its stance toward the events unfolding in Iran and the model of the repeatedly proclaimed allied relationship with Tehran remains rather ambivalent. On the one hand, in January of last year the long-discussed 20-year “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Plan” between the two countries was signed. The agreement, ratified in April and May respectively by the Russian and Iranian parliaments, demonstrated a new phase of military and economic rapprochement between Moscow and Tehran.

On the other hand, Iran did not conceal its skepticism regarding Russia’s reliability, given that Moscow refrained from providing direct support to Tehran during the 12-day Iran–Israel war in June 2025. Nevertheless, on December 17, 2025, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran signed a document in Moscow establishing a framework for consultations in 2026–2028 aimed at the practical implementation of the aforementioned plan, which, judging by all appearances, was intended to demonstrate that the incident had, at least at this stage, been resolved.

Iran clearly needs cooperation with Russia, primarily in the nuclear sphere. Russia, for its part, undoubtedly needs Iran’s support in coordinating sanctions-related issues and in confronting the pro-American bloc in regions that still represent significant geopolitical interests for Moscow, such as the South Caucasus and the Middle East. This is all the more so because, due to the war in Ukraine, as commentators note,
Russia has already lost—or risks losing in the near future—several of its key allies, such as the Assad regime in Syria in 2024 and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Against this backdrop, Iran’s value to Moscow appears, at first glance, only to have increased. Thus, at the end of October 2025, Russia’s ambassador to Tehran, Alexey Dedov, said in an interview with the ISNA news agency that cooperation between the two countries had reached an unprecedented level, and that Russia supports Iran in seeking solutions to issues related to its nuclear program. Indeed, already at the end of September of that year, Rosatom and Iran Hormoz signed a US$25 billion contract to build the first four of the eight planned new nuclear power plants in Iran.

There is little doubt that the declared “purely civilian nature” of Iran’s nuclear program includes a powerful military component. In fact, on November 2, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian effectively confirmed this, stating, according to the same agency, that Iran would make every effort to rebuild nuclear facilities destroyed in June 2025 by Israeli and U.S. air strikes. It is no coincidence that in Jerusalem and Washington in recent months the likelihood of a new confrontation with Iran has been seriously discussed, although the team of U.S. President Donald Trump clearly hoped—and apparently still hopes, even amid mass anti-government protests in Iran—that such a scenario can be prevented through diplomatic means.

Given these trends, it would have been logical to expect Moscow to side with Iran’s leadership in the current socio-political crisis, which poses a real threat to the survival of the ayatollahs’ regime. However, at the official level Russia has so far avoided direct assessments of what is happening in Iran. One of the few more or less explicit declarations by the Russian authorities was a statement by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, condemning the United States and Israel for threatening to strike Iran in response to the killing of protesters by Iranian security forces. Otherwise, the rhetoric of Russian officials has remained quite restrained.

An example is the statement by the Russian embassy in Iran, which, unlike its unequivocal support for Iran’s nuclear program almost three months earlier, this time limited itself to a cautious expression of concern over clashes by “certain elements with law enforcement officers who are doing their job to ensure order and legality.” It also assured that despite “protests and demonstrations in some provinces” linked to “economic difficulties that the government is actively addressing… overall, normal life continues as usual.” Nearly two weeks later, during which Moscow remained largely silent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov himself declared that “no third party can alter the fundamental nature of relations” between the two countries. However, this was not followed by any sustained concrete steps on Russia’s part.

Among the likely motives behind the cautious stance of the Russian authorities is, apparently, their reluctance—despite regular attacks on the Americans—to enter into direct confrontation with Donald Trump, on whom the Kremlin still pins hopes that the U.S. president will be able to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine on Moscow’s terms. Therefore, it likely does not seem rational to them to take actions that could provoke unproductive irritation from the White House, whose occupant has openly—albeit so far mostly at a declarative level—supported Iranian society’s protest against the Islamist fundamentalist regime. Another possible motive may be the interests of Russia’s oil lobby, which may well be рассчитыing that Iran’s exit from the relatively narrow energy markets available to sanctioned regimes—primarily India and China—will trigger price growth and allow Russian companies to occupy the niche vacated by Iran.

Nevertheless, Moscow may well provide some form of support to its Iranian allies. It is clear that Moscow will not rescue Iran through direct military intervention. Thus, media reports have already appeared about possible Russian deliveries to Iran of military equipment that could be effective in suppressing armed resistance by regime opponents, such as Mi-28 attack helicopters and Spartak armored vehicles. In any case, they will clearly try to provide such assistance without much publicity.

Much more visible is Russia’s propagandistic and diplomatic support for Iran’s theocratic regime. On the former point, it appears that most efforts are directed at criticizing “external forces” allegedly responsible for destabilizing Iran and its surroundings, preferably doing so on international platforms, primarily within organizations of the “Global South.”

The diplomatic dimension looks somewhat more substantial. Moscow, which is trying to regain the mediator status in the Middle East that it lost after invading Ukraine, is making visible efforts to reduce the threat of a possible U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran’s military facilities and governing institutions. In doing so, it seeks to give its Tehran partners an additional chance to preserve their regime, while also restoring—at least partially—its own reputation in the region and in the world at large.

In this regard, a telling example is the phone call initiated by Vladimir Putin with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which the Russian president offered his services to de-escalate tensions between Jerusalem and Tehran. According to available information, Netanyahu responded positively to the idea. In fact, several days before mass protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials, according to American and Israeli media, used Russian channels to convey a message to the Iranian leadership that Israel would not strike Iranian targets if it were not attacked first, receiving a positive response in return.

It appears that after the protests began in Iran, the position of the Israeli leadership did not change, despite the fact that, as an opinion poll published on January 16, 2026 showed, three out of every four Israelis support Israel joining a hypothetical U.S. attack on Iran (of these, 29% supported this idea only if Iran first attacked or was preparing to attack Israel, while 44% would support Israeli participation regardless of Iranian actions). Only 19% believed that an attack should be left to the U.S. alone. In this sense, members of Israel’s political leadership deemed it advisable to join the recommendations of several U.S. Arab partners urging the American administration to refrain from attacking Iran, which, in their view, “can bring instability into the region”.

In turn, the Israeli leadership argued that the Iranian regime has not yet weakened to the point where U.S. military strikes could lead to the fall of the ayatollahs’ regime. They also fear the opposite scenario—that at this stage, external military intervention could “fail to finish the job” begun by demonstrators in their protest against the regime. According to a report by The New York Times, later widely cited by other international and Israeli media, another argument in favor of asking the U.S. to refrain from striking Iran at this stage, voiced—according to the same sources—by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his phone conversation with Donald Trump, was Israel’s alleged lack of readiness and a shortage of interceptors. (Boaz Levy, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries—one of Israel’s main producers of advanced and unique air-defense systems—while not directly addressing the unconfirmed NYT publication, effectively refuted this argument by stating that “interceptors are produced around the clock,” and that Israel is ready for an Iranian challenge.)

In any case, President Donald Trump soon stated that he decided not to strike Iran “on his own,” dismissing claims of outside pressure, and praised Tehran for canceling what he said were planned mass executions of detained protesters. At the same time, as can be noted, he continues to maintain suspense over whether he might at some point return the option of military intervention in Iran to the agenda.

Indeed, just a few days after this statement, it became known that the United States was sending a carrier strike group to Iran’s shores, redeploying fighter jets and bombers of various types to the region, along with air-defense systems. For its part, the IDF had already by January 22, 2026 fully completed preparations for a possible American operation. Even in this situation, however, different scenarios remain possible.

Against this backdrop, Moscow may, fairly or not, chalk up one or two diplomatic points to its credit and continue to refrain from binding steps and statements.

What the Authorities Think, What the Media Say?

Naturally, Russia’s leaders do not like the current domestic political situation in Iran. It too closely resembles the experience of the “color revolutions” in post-Soviet countries, which resulted in Moscow losing a significant part of its influence in a space that it still considers—more than three and a half decades after the collapse of the USSR—to be a zone of its exclusive geopolitical interests. But while at the official level Russian officials still speak cautiously, at most allowing themselves from time to time to criticize “external forces” for their “interference in the crisis in Iran,” the real attitude of the Russian authorities toward what is happening is freely voiced by the pro-Kremlin press.

In publications by Russian state media, reviewed by journalist Sergey Rybalkin, Iranian protesters are described as “mutineers,” “rebels,” or “rioters,” while the protests themselves are labeled “disturbances,” with almost no mention of the causes that triggered the current powerful wave of protests in the country. Likewise, the widespread violence by security forces—leading to the deaths or injuries of many thousands of Iranian citizens—is ignored. And when these facts can no longer be silenced, a classic propaganda device is employed: claims that it is “armed terrorists” who are opening fire on people, allegedly exploiting the protests.

At this stage, it is still difficult to say whether such statements and assessments will, as has happened in the past, become the language of official Russian government documents. For now, commentators believe that Moscow’s willingness to save the Iranian regime should not be overstated. Therefore, Tehran can count on Russian consultations and supplies of suitable weapons, as well as the possibility of providing asylum to Iranian leaders—just as was previously done for Yanukovych, Assad, and the heads of other regimes allied with Russia when matters took a serious turn for them. But at this stage—hardly more than that.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 173 (December 24, 2025)

A working visit to Israel by Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan on November 27 triggered a sharp reaction in Iran. Particular concern was caused by the fact that Israeli media placed special emphasis on the topic of the “Trump Corridor,” or, as it is called in Azerbaijan, the Zangezur Corridor, which would create a route from Central Asia to Europe bypassing Iran and Russia. Armenian officials have now been forced to justify themselves, demonstrating a still-persistent vassal loyalty.

Iran’s reaction to Armenia’s recent diplomatic signaling toward Israel and the West reveals deep strategic anxiety rooted in geography, regime security, and long-standing regional red lines. The visit by Kostanyan, although framed in Yerevan as a limited diplomatic engagement, was perceived in Tehran as part of a broader and dangerous trajectory: Armenia’s gradual drift away from exclusive dependence on Iran and Russia and toward Western and Israeli political, security, and technological networks.

For Iran, Armenia occupies a uniquely sensitive position, as it is considered a vital geopolitical asset. It is Iran’s only direct land bridge to the Eurasian Economic Union and—critically—a buffer preventing the emergence of a continuous Turkic corridor linking Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan and onward to Turkey. Any Armenian realignment that weakens Tehran’s influence in the region therefore triggers alarm far beyond routine diplomacy. Even the slightest sign of Israeli involvement inflames Iranian fears of an isolation scenario—Turkic countries to the north and east, Israelis and Arab states to the south.

Iranian media commentary following Kostanyan’s visit to Israel was telling. Outlets such as Tehran Times, Eghtesad, Tabnak, and Mehr News explicitly linked Armenia’s outreach to Israel and the West with the threat of the Trump/Zangezur Corridor. In Iranian strategic thinking, this corridor is not merely a transport project. It is viewed as an existential threat that could sever Iran’s direct access to Armenia, reduce Tehran’s leverage in the Caucasus, and facilitate greater Israeli, Turkish, and Western penetration along Iran’s northern border.

From Tehran’s perspective, the corridor is part of a larger containment architecture. Iranian analysts increasingly frame it as a geopolitical extension of U.S. and Israeli pressure—one that would encircle Iran from the north just as sanctions and military pressure constrain it from the west and south. In this narrative, Armenia’s current engagement with Israel—however modest in practical terms—feeds suspicions that Yerevan could be drawn into hostile intelligence, surveillance, or logistical arrangements targeting Iran.

This anxiety has translated into pressure. Iranian officials and media have issued repeated warnings that any change to internationally recognized borders in the region is unacceptable. Behind closed doors, Tehran has aggressively pushed Yerevan to publicly reaffirm loyalty and restraint.

Here are several examples:

December 17 – Mehr News, controlled by the Islamic Propagation Organization (IPO) and a long-time disseminator of IRGC messaging, described the fears connected to the visit: “During a recent meeting between Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Zionist regime, the parties discussed cooperation in the fields of high technology, medicine, agriculture, and tourism. These are precisely the areas that Israel typically uses as instruments of soft, long-term influence. Its objectives are:

1. Closing the chain of Israeli influence in the South Caucasus.
   Israel has long maintained a presence in Azerbaijan. A warming of relations with Armenia creates the possibility of forming a ‘triangular corridor of influence’ along Iran’s borders.

2. Penetration through low-cost but highly effective development projects.
   Projects in modern agriculture, healthcare, or crisis management are far from being purely technical. As a rule, they involve a prolonged presence of experts, the formation of institutional networks, stable contacts, and the creation of new communication channels. In a number of countries, such mechanisms have served as a foundation for intelligence, economic, or political penetration.

3. Yerevan’s limited ability to change its foreign policy course.
   After the military defeats of 2020 and 2023, Armenia is searching for alternatives to its traditional foreign policy pillars. This structural need turns Israel into a ‘window of opportunity’ for Yerevan.

4. Gradual distancing from traditional axes and a shift in the balance along Iran’s borders.
   The deeper Armenia’s cooperation with Israel becomes in sensitive areas—from agriculture and healthcare to education and crisis management—the further Yerevan moves away from its traditional foreign policy alignments.”

December 19 – The Tabnak agency, linked to former IRGC commander-in-chief Mohsen Rezaei, hinted at possible Iranian countermeasures: “The TRIPP initiative has also affected Iran’s usually calm relations with its neighbor Armenia. Although Armenia seeks to reduce Iran’s concerns, its consent to the creation of a U.S.-managed corridor in such close proximity to the heart of Iran inevitably generates tension. Iran views Armenia as a vital route to Europe and a protective shield against the growing influence of its Turkic-speaking neighbors; any sign of Armenia’s inclination toward Western influence causes alarm among Iran’s leaders, accompanied by a heavy heart and a suspicious gaze. Iran is assessing its future options, which may include covert efforts to slow the construction of this corridor or extensive use of diplomatic consultations with Armenia.”

Similar hints were voiced by the regime’s mouthpiece, Tehran Times: “Without doubt, the central focus of Kostanyan’s talks with Israeli officials concerned the ‘Trump Route,’ otherwise known as the Zangezur Corridor… Engaging in direct consultations with Israel, without sufficient regard for Tehran’s considerations, signals Yerevan’s prioritization of foreign policy alignment with the West and the United States. Kostanyan’s trip, in fact, offers a clear picture of Armenia’s foreign policy trajectory: a country that, in pursuit of economic and geopolitical goals, does not place Iran’s security concerns at the forefront, while simultaneously seeking to expand the influence and support of external partners. Consequently, this move could intensify regional tensions and further complicate the security balance in the Caucasus. It also heightens the sensitivity of Iran’s role in countering projects such as the Zangezur Corridor.”

The result of this pressure has been a visible rhetorical retreat by Armenian officials. Statements from Yerevan increasingly describe Iran as Armenia’s “main ally” and “strategic partner,” language clearly intended to reassure Tehran and de-escalate tensions. Iranian media widely circulated these statements, in particular to demonstrate to the domestic audience that the regime has the situation with Armenia under control.

Tasnim News, one of the IRGC’s principal media outlets, published an extensive interview with Armenia’s ambassador to Iran, Grigor Hakobyan: In particular, it stated that “relations between Armenia and Iran have always been distinguished by such a quality of mutual respect, trust, and good-neighborliness that gives them unique value in the region… these relations are developing not only within the framework of ordinary conditions and motivations, but also with a specific purpose and perspective—to acquire a strategic character.”

Regarding the Trump Route, Hakobyan noted: “It should be emphasized that throughout this entire process Yerevan has remained faithful and committed to an atmosphere of friendship and mutual trust, has officially taken into account Tehran’s vital interests, and has conducted active negotiations on ongoing developments at various levels. It should be noted that these principles have always been the foundation and key pillars for both Armenia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and their preservation fully corresponds to the interests of both countries.”

The relatively reformist outlet Eghtesad provided details of a meeting between Armenia’s ambassador in Tehran and Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader on international affairs. Velayati directly told Hakobyan of Iran’s disagreement with what he called the “Trump plan for the Caucasus”—a transit route envisaging the connection of Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan through southern Armenia. “Armenian officials rejected these concerns, emphasizing that this is a commercial project that takes into account the vital interests of neighbors, including Iran. Vice-Speaker of Armenia’s National Assembly Ruben Rubinyan stated that this project is not an alternative name for the Zangezur Corridor and that no extraterritorial corridor through Armenian territory will be created,” the outlet quoted the Armenian diplomat as saying.

On December 21 – Mehr News, in turn, reported that the Iranian Islamic Coalition Party and the Prosperous Armenia Party signed a cooperation agreement. “The development of such party and parliamentary ties is viewed as a complement to official diplomacy and as a factor in deepening and enhancing the resilience of interstate relations. This memorandum can create a foundation for expanding exchanges between political parties, media representatives, and civil society institutions of the two countries,” the outlet noted.

In this context, it is worth recalling the above-mentioned Mehr publication about Israel’s “soft influence”—in essence, the alliance between the two parties represents a kind of Iranian response to the “Israeli plans.”

Most likely, Armenia’s behavior reflects its constrained position rather than ideological alignment. Given limited trust in Russia and only nascent Western support, Yerevan cannot afford open confrontation with Iran. Apologetic messaging toward Tehran following the Israel visit underscores Armenia’s fear of Iranian retaliation—whether through economic pressure, diplomatic obstruction, or covert destabilization.

In sum, Iran’s fear is not about a single diplomatic visit. It is about losing strategic depth in the South Caucasus. Any Armenian move toward Israel or the West, however symbolic, is interpreted in Tehran through the lens of regime security and encirclement. The TRIPP/Zangezur Corridor remains the focal point of this anxiety, and until that issue is definitively resolved, Iran will continue to pressure Armenia to remain firmly within Tehran’s geopolitical comfort zone—even as Armenia quietly searches for alternatives.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 160 (October 23, 2025)

The arrest of Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan and several priests in mid-October 2025 has deepened tensions between the Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church, an institution whose leadership maintains historic and political ties to Russia. Authorities describe the operation as part of a criminal investigation into alleged abuses of religious authority, including coercing parishioners to participate in anti-government protests and interference in electoral processes.

While the Church denies the accusations and has characterized the arrests as an attack on Christianity, analysts note that it has historically played a political role aligned with Russian interests and segments of the Armenian elite. Similar to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, which has supported Russian objectives, the Armenian Apostolic Church has in recent years engaged in activities that align with Moscow’s broader strategic goals.

A Church Under Investigation — or Political Siege?

Bishop Proshyan, who leads the Aragatsotn Diocese and is the nephew of Catholicos Karekin II, occupies a senior position in one of Armenia’s key dioceses. His detention carries symbolic weight, signaling that the government is willing to confront the Church hierarchy directly.

The arrests are part of a broader pattern targeting senior clergy. In June 2025, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan — a prominent figure in anti-government protests — was detained and accused of plotting a coup and recruiting former soldiers and police officers to undermine the state. Earlier in October, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan was sentenced to two years in prison for publicly calling for the government’s overthrow.

These measures follow the 2024 protests triggered by Armenia’s decision to cede several border villages to Azerbaijan, a policy the Church vocally opposed. Religious institutions, including monasteries and parish networks, became focal points for anti-government mobilization. What the government describes as treason or subversion, the Church frames as fulfilling its spiritual duty.
 

Why the Church Won’t Stay Out of Politics

The Armenian Apostolic Church is not just a religious institution — it is one of the oldest national bodies, predating the modern Armenian state. Its leadership, including Catholicos Karekin II, was elevated with the support of the pre-2018 political elite. Karekin II’s election in 1999 was reportedly controversial; critics, including some within the Church, alleged that external pressures influenced the process and that factions with ties to the Soviet-era security apparatus played a role. This highlights a longstanding entanglement of the Church’s hierarchy with political power structures. That same elite is now largely in opposition to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, meaning the Church’s top hierarchy remains spiritually Armenian but politically aligned with the old, Moscow-influenced system of governance.

The Church’s political role can be traced even further back to the Soviet period. Under Stalin, religious institutions across the USSR were destroyed and then selectively resurrected, with heavy infiltration by KGB agents to control clerical leadership and influence local populations. In the case of Armenia, the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of leaked KGB documents, indicates that the Armenian Church, along with other Soviet religious institutions, was at times used for political purposes by Soviet intelligence. The archive notes that while lower-ranking clergy were not always recruited as agents, senior hierarchs were almost always integrated into intelligence networks, reflecting the importance of the Church’s leadership for Soviet influence operations. Even after the collapse of the USSR, many of these institutional and personal connections persisted. For example, the late leader of the Armenian Church in Australia and New Zealand, who died in 2014, was revealed to have worked with Russian intelligence, though it remains unclear whether these ties continued after the Soviet era.

This historical legacy helps explain the Church’s contemporary stance toward Armenian domestic and foreign policy. It has consistently opposed Pashinyan’s moves toward peace with Azerbaijan, closer integration with the European Union, and a deliberate distancing from Russia. For many in the clergy, these policy shifts are not merely diplomatic decisions — they are perceived as betrayals of Armenia’s traditional alliances and national interests.

The Billionaire Behind the Backdrop

But the story is not only about religious ideology. Economic and political influence also plays a role, and this is where Samvel Karapetyan enters.

Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire and owner of the Tashir Group, is one of the wealthiest Armenians globally. In July 2025, he publicly supported Church-led opposition to Pashinyan.

Karapetyan built his business empire in Russia and maintains close ties to its political and economic establishment. His company was awarded the state contract to construct the new headquarters of the Investigative Committee of Russia, one of the Kremlin’s most sensitive law enforcement bodies. In Russia, contracts of this type are typically granted only to companies with established trust at the highest levels of government. Indeed, Russian media have described Karapetyan as one of the “kings of state procurement,” a term used for oligarchs whose business success is closely tied to government networks.

His involvement in Armenian political and Church-related activities has drawn attention precisely because of these connections. In June 2025, Karapetyan was arrested in Armenia on charges of inciting unrest, an event that coincided closely with the arrests of senior clergy. Observers note that the timing of these detentions reflects the government’s effort to address overlapping political, religious, and economic networks, though officials maintain the cases are legal and not politically motivated.

Strategic Corridors and External Pressures

Karapetyan’s name also surfaced during the Second Karabakh War in 2020, when Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused him of facilitating the transfer of weapons and fighters from Russia to Armenia. These allegations were never publicly proven, but they drew attention to Karapetyan’s capacity to move resources and funds across borders.

The situation highlights Armenia’s position as a strategic corridor between Russia and Iran, as well as between sanctioned economies and regional trade networks. Both Moscow and Tehran have longstanding interests in maintaining influence in the country.

Observers note that the Armenian Apostolic Church, through its network of religious institutions, can mobilize public sentiment, while wealthy individuals like Karapetyan provide financial support. In this context, Armenia’s internal politics take on broader regional significance. While there is no direct evidence of coordinated foreign interference, the government’s recent actions against clerics and politically active figures underscore the complex interplay between domestic dissent and regional strategic considerations.

Armenia: Serbia 2.0 in the Making?

The playbook is not new. In the 1990s, the Serbian Orthodox Church helped mobilize nationalist sentiment over Kosovo, with the Kremlin amplifying these narratives. The result was conflict, international isolation, stalled European integration, and a lasting legacy of trauma. Churches can support peace — or amplify division. When they intersect with foreign power networks, their influence can have significant geopolitical consequences.

Armenia now faces a similar challenge: will it remain tethered to the legacy of past wars and nostalgia, or pursue a democratic path with closer ties to Europe? Choosing the former — nationalist ambitions in Karabakh, clerical activism, and financially backed opposition — risks replicating Serbia’s trajectory. Opting for reform, Western integration, and strengthened sovereignty would represent a decisive step away from Moscow’s influence.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for 2026, Armenia’s political orientation is entering a critical phase. Prime Minister Pashinyan’s government presents itself as a reformist, pro-European force, while Church-aligned opposition groups, supported by oligarchic networks with connections to Moscow, frame the administration as illegitimate. Observers interpret recent arrests of clerics and figures such as Samvel Karapetyan as efforts to curb the consolidation of this opposition before it can mount a formal electoral challenge.

The Armenian government's actions against the Armenian Apostolic Church have not gone unnoticed by Moscow. The Russian Orthodox Church condemned Armenia's actions against the Armenian Apostolic Church, labeling the arrest of philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan as political persecution. Simultaneously, Russian media figures such as Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Solovyev have openly called for Pashinyan's removal and for Russia to protect Karapetyan, highlighting the Kremlin's vested interest in Armenia's internal affairs.

The involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as pro-Kremlin propagandists signals Moscow's concern over the situation, reflecting the intertwined nature of religious institutions and state power in the region. The response from the Russian Orthodox Church may influence public perception in Armenia, particularly among those who view the Church as a stabilizing force and a symbol of national identity.

These actions are not about questioning the Church’s importance as an institution — that role remains widely acknowledged. They reflect a deeper question: who ultimately governs Armenia — its elected leaders, or the legacy of its past?

PSCRP team

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 156 (September 29, 2025)

The core element in the foreign policy of post-Soviet countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus is so-called multivectoralism: maintaining relations with multiple global actors without binding themselves exclusively to any single one. These states seek to balance ties with the China–Russia axis and the collective West (including the USA and the EU—although it should be noted that the internal fragility of this grouping has never been as evident as it is now). These actors, who claim global influence in the world politics, can be regarded as the first tier of influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. A second, regional tier consists of other regional neighbors, with Turkey (and, to a lesser extent, Iran) being the most prominent actors in this “regional league.”

Amid today’s global uncertainty and high risks, the states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia are striving to diversify their foreign policies as much as possible, with the goal of strengthening their autonomy and agency. In Central Eurasia, where these countries are located, there is currently a clear weakening of the Western vector of influence. There are several reasons for that:

• The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting loss of interest in adjacent post-Soviet regions.

• The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, both of which have diminished the earlier geopolitical relevance of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

• The weakening of the West due to internal political conflicts and the confrontation between the Trump administration and the European political mainstream.

Nevertheless, preserving good relations with the West - and, in many cases, artificially “boosting” this vector of foreign policy despite limited reciprocal interest from the Western side — has become, within the framework of multivectoralism, a strategy of survival for the post-Soviet South. Otherwise, these states risk falling into complete dependence on the China–Russia bloc, which aspires to global influence, as well as on regional powers such as Turkey and Iran.

The above features of foreign policy were clearly visible in the policies of the several key states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia in late summer and early autumn 2025. Two distinct diplomatic styles can be identified: a “soft” Central Asian one (most evident in the recent diplomatic moves of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), and a “hard” Caucasian one (best exemplified by the policies of Azerbaijan and Armenia). In both cases, however, there is a clear attempt to rebalance foreign policy so as to reduce dependence on immediate Central Eurasian neighbors by strengthening ties with the West - above all with the United States, as the leader of the Western world.

At the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered a speech in which he called for reform of the UN (a logical position, given his earlier service as UN Deputy Secretary-General) and for strengthening the global role of the “middle powers.”

Tokayev stressed that middle powers such as Kazakhstan can contribute to global balance by acting as intermediaries between major powers. He also advocated for diplomatic solutions to armed conflicts, including the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

Amid the UN General Assembly, on 22 September 2025, Wabtec Corporation (USA) announced the signing of a $4.2 billion contract with Kazakhstan’s national railway company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, for the supply of 300 locomotives and their long-term maintenance. This agreement is considered the largest locomotive supply contract in Wabtec’s history. The contract goes beyond delivering locomotive kits, including servicing, technical support, and likely local assembly. The deal creates about 11,000 jobs in the United States across supply chains, manufacturing, and maintenance. Previously, Kazakhstan had procured locomotives from Russian manufacturers (Transmashholding).

Several analysts have also drawn attention to the strategic dimensions of the deal. Kazakhstan’s leadership is not only creating jobs in the United States -something the Trump administration welcomes — but also strengthening the Trans-Caspian route to Europe, bypassing Russia and Iran. It should be noted that the West has long supported this route for strategic reasons, while China has also traditionally favored it as part of its broader policy of diversifying continental transport corridors and assisting the development of Central Asian and South Caucasus states. Thus, although the move is unwelcome in Moscow and Tehran, it is well received in Brussels and Washington, and cannot be described as directed against Beijing. Overall, it can be seen as a subtle diplomatic maneuver within the framework of Kazakhstan’s multivector foreign policy. In June 2025, Kazakhstan awarded Russia a major contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant; the new U.S. locomotive contract serves to balance that move.

Russian experts paid even closer attention to the meeting that took place on 23 September 2025 on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York between President Tokayev and President Zelensky of Ukraine. Observers noted that the two leaders conversed in English, rather than Russian. For Tokayev – a career diplomat and polyglot - this was natural and carried little symbolic meaning. For Zelensky, however, the choice was more significant, as he consistently conducts his diplomatic communication either in English or in Ukrainian. During the meeting, Zelensky thanked Kazakhstan for supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Tokayev, in turn, emphasized that a final resolution of the conflict must be achieved through diplomacy. The two leaders also discussed economic and humanitarian cooperation. Afterward, Tokayev stated that Kazakhstan was ready to provide a venue for a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, should both sides express interest.

Kazakhstan had previously played a similar role in facilitating rapprochement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as between Russia and Turkey during a flare-up of tensions over Syria. At the same time, in the context of his visit to New York, Uzbekistan’s President Mirziyoyev achieved a significant breakthrough in relations with the Trump administration. Like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan under its second president seeks to strengthen contacts with the West while avoiding rhetoric directly aimed against Russia or China. Unlike his predecessor Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev generally avoids political framing in such cases, emphasizing instead the economic pragmatism of his actions.

On 23 September 2025 in New York, on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, President Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan met with Donald Trump. During the meeting, the two discussed issues of strategic partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States, expansion of economic cooperation, as well as projects in key sectors (aviation, infrastructure, technology). After the meeting, Trump publicly praised Mirziyoyev, calling him a “man of his word” in reference to the fulfillment of agreements.

Before meeting Trump, Mirziyoyev had held talks with representatives of more than 50 American companies and banks, discussing large-scale business deals. During his UN visit, Uzbekistan and Boeing signed a contract for the purchase of up to 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, valued at more than $8 billion. The initial agreement provides for the delivery of 14 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, with an option for an additional 8 units. The deal is described as the largest of its kind in Central Asia. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2031, with the contract projected to support about 35,000 jobs in the United States.

The foreign policy content of Mirziyoyev’s speech at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025 largely mirrored that of Tokayev’s address. He stressed the need to reform international institutions, especially by strengthening the role of developing countries and reshaping the composition of the UN Security Council to better reflect contemporary challenges. He also noted the growing number of conflicts in today’s world, voiced support for diplomatic efforts to resolve the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East and called for the development of regional transport corridors.

The similarity of the policies of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as demonstrated by the September visits of their presidents, became quite clear. In both cases, the countries face growing geopolitical conflicts and global uncertainty, and they seek to strengthen their position through multivector diplomacy—particularly by deepening ties with the U.S. administration. In both cases, diplomacy is pursued through expanding economic cooperation with the United States and promoting transport corridors that enhance economic diversification and reduce dependence on Central Eurasian neighbors.

To strengthen the comparative dimension of the analysis, the diplomatic moves of the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan should be contrasted with the summer actions of the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On 8 August 2025, a ceremony was held at the White House in Washington, where Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a joint declaration. Trump acted as mediator, and the project was named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

Under the agreements, Armenia granted the American side a 99-year concession for development of the territory. The corridor will function under Armenian law (meaning Armenian jurisdiction remains in place), but the United States will receive exclusive rights to develop infrastructure — roads, railways, energy pipelines, communication lines, and more. The corridor is intended to provide transport connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenia (Syunik/Zangezur). This transit corridor is a key element of the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, aimed at normalizing communications and opening transport routes. Russia and Iran expressed concern over the agreement, viewing it as an expansion of U.S. influence in the South Caucasus and a potential weakening of Moscow’s and Tehran’s role in the region.

The agreements are important not only as a U.S.-backed solution to the previously tense diplomatic situation around Zangezur, which threatened to trigger a new war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also from a geopolitical perspective. They represent a major strategic step in developing the same Middle Corridor via the Caspian Sea that bypasses Russia and Iran — a route which, as shown above, Central Asian countries have been developing in a more diplomatically cautious manner. It is also significant that Trump thereby signaled Washington’s claim to hegemony in the South Caucasus. Other actors who had previously played a key role in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan (for instance, France and Russia) were thus sidelined.

It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia have entered into open confrontation with Russia. In Azerbaijan’s case, this concerns the conflict over the Azerbaijani civilian airliner damaged over Chechnya on 25 December 2024, resulting in the deaths of most of its passengers, as well as the crisis surrounding the Azerbaijani diaspora in Russia. Whereas earlier Azerbaijan, within the framework of its multivector foreign policy, sought to maintain a strategic partnership with Russia, this is now far less of a priority for Baku. Demonstrative elements may also be linked to recent developments in the Middle East: the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria and the rise of Turkey-friendly forces, as well as major Israeli strikes — supported by the United States — against the Iranian “axis of resistance.” These events appear to have led President Ilham Aliyev to conclude that Russia’s and Iran’s influence in the Middle East is weakening. At the same time, in the spirit of multivector diplomacy, Aliyev sought to “balance” his deepening contacts with the United States by making a working visit to China on 30 August 2025, during which he exchanged a handshake and brief conversation with then-present Russian President Putin. Thus, Aliyev is leaving open the option of engaging with the China–Russia axis if necessary.

In Armenia’s case, the issue lies in longstanding tensions between Russia’s leadership and Pashinyan’s government. The unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan had represented the sole obstacle preventing Armenia’s full reorientation toward the West. With Trump’s assistance, that obstacle is now beginning to disappear. Moreover, within Armenia’s multivector foreign policy, Yerevan may now have less need to use Tehran — already weakened by Israeli and U.S. actions — alongside the United States and France as a balancing partner in the security sphere. As a “safety net,” however, Armenia remains a member of the Russia-centered CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, and it has not severed ties with Tehran completely.

Overall, an analysis of the policies of Armenia and Azerbaijan in late summer and early autumn 2025 reveals clear similarities with the strategies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan discussed above. In all the cases, the focus is on multivector foreign policy, on “boosting” the Western vector through engagement with the Trump administration, on economic diplomacy, and on the crucial role of the Trans-Caspian route. The only difference lies in diplomatic style: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while strengthening the American vector, seek to avoid conflict with other foreign policy vectors (above all Moscow), whereas Azerbaijan and Armenia act much more assertively — though still maintaining elements of a multivector “insurance policy” by preserving a certain level of relations with China, Russia, and, in Armenia’s case, Iran.