Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry has given notice that on June 12 joint military exercises with some military units of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been hold, involving infantry units, aircraft, UAVs and ground assets in what it has been described as training activities designed to “increase commanders’ decision-making capabilities and improve the interoperability of participating units.”
The exercises were held simultaneously in Iran’s eastern Azerbaijan region and the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakchivan, in a manner that apparently saw the two countries’ armed forces conduct the operations separately within their own national territory.
The willingness to conduct joint exercises had been made last October, when the two governments signed a military-level memorandum providing for both land and naval operations in the Caspian area, then fleshed out these intentions on June 12 with the organization of an initial joint exercise aimed at perfecting their respective capabilities in protecting strategic infrastructure and lines of communication from potential acts of sabotage.
Although these exercises did not involve any real joint deployment of the two countries’ armed forces, each component remaining within its own territory, the political value of the event is of great importance, demonstrating an evolution in bilateral relations that is more far-reaching than in the past.
Indeed, relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have historically been characterized by geopolitical tensions of no small magnitude since the end of World War II, which were then accentuated by the dissolution of the USSR and as a result of the two conflicts involving Azerbaijan and Armenia. The first conflict between the two countries (between 1988 and 1994) had been accompanied by an Iranian attempt to support a mediation, which was then thwarted by the resumption of fighting on the Armenian side, and by Azerbaijan’s subsequent accusation to Iran of openly supporting Armenia in the war.
Nonetheless, a bilateral joint defense commission had been established in April 2015 and tasked with identifying items of common interest, promoting cooperation, formulating common proposals, and organizing joint exercises.
At the time of the second conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia (fought between September 27 and November 10, 2020), however, tensions between Baku and Tehran had escalated again, mainly as a result of Iran’s decision to conduct military exercises along its northern border with Azerbaijan, which the Baku government had perceived as a clear threat. Azerbaijani exercises in cooperation with Turkey had ensued and then a rise in tensions culminating in the attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran on January 27, 2023, which resulted in one death and two injuries.
Changing regional balances over the past five years, however, led Iran to adopt a more pragmatic policy toward Azerbaijan, geared toward identifying opportunities for cooperation and mitigating the aggressive tones that had characterized relations with Baku especially since 2020. Convincing Tehran of the need for a new and different approach toward Azerbaijan has certainly been helped on the one hand by Baku’s hardening of relations with the United States and Israel, where Iran does not intend to concede to the latter the possibility of a close ability to interfere in its regional affairs, and by Armenia’s concomitant opening to the United States in an anti-Russian vein, which has instead resulted in the opposite effect with respect to Azerbaijan, significantly cooling the historical good relations between the two countries.
The long-standing geopolitical disputes between Iran and Azerbaijan are thus not diminished, although Tehran now appears intent on changing its historical posture toward Baku because of realpolitik and the need to turn an adversary if not into an ally at least into a non-belligerent neighbor, in the vein of what it has also pursued with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf area.
The joint exercises of last June 12, in this context, while not taking the form of a full and coordinated military exercise with the movement of respective military units outside national borders, represent a gesture of openness to mutual cooperation that both countries intend to pursue at this time, albeit for different reasons. For Iran, they present an opportunity to mitigate the extent of the U.S.-Israeli role in Azerbaijan while sending a clear cooling signal to Armenia precisely as a result of its openings to Washington, while for Azerbaijan, the joint exercises with Iran represent an important means of political legitimization of its territorial hegemony, recently reinforced by the rapid military operation that led to the restoration of Azerbaijani sovereignty over the Nagorno-Karabakh region on last September 19.
