INTO THE FRAY: The alliance that alarms the Ayatollahs
As the Iranian regime inches closer to its desired doomsday weapon, the rationale for a countervailing triaxial alliance between the US, Israel and Azerbaijan has never been more compelling.
Martin Sherman
“When a wise man hears of the Tao, he immediately embraces it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he ignores it. When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he mocks it. If he did not mock it, it wouldn’t be the Tao.”
Tao Te Ching (Ancient Chinese philosophical text) – Verse 41
The landslide victory of Donald Trump in the November 2024 elections set the proverbial cat among pigeons. Suddenly, things that previously appeared totally impossible—or at best, highly improbable—look increasingly feasible.
“Red Alert” in Iran
This seems particularly true concerning the Iranian nuclear program and the chances of defusing the danger it presents.
In this regard, earlier this month, Iran Daily, which functions as the official mouthpiece of the Iranian regime, published a front-page article titled “Israel’s Growing Footprint in Azerbaijan Raises Red Alert,” urging Iranian security and government institutions to closely follow developments in the Caucasus region.
In conveying its concern over the winds of change blowing from the White House, the article refers to a January 2023 policy paper by a leading Israeli think tank that features prominently in a recent article of mine, discussing the potential value of a Washington-Jerusalem-Baku axis. I ended that article with a proposal that such an axis “is something the new U.S. administration should factor into its foreign policy in its endeavor to engender enhanced stability across the globe.”
Judging from the Iran Daily’s reaction, it seems that Tehran not only recognizes the likely potential of such an axis, but is greatly alarmed by such a prospect.
A triaxial alliance
Indeed, Iranian paper mentions a more recent paper, published by the very same think-tank, of a more recent article articulating, if anything, even more expressly, the potential benefits such an alliance could entail.
Given the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the global order, the paper suggests that Azerbaijan’s significance—both for U.S. and Israeli strategic interests—has increased even further. It lists several possibilities in which Baku’s advantage and capabilities can be effectively leveraged to benefit the more robust American administration and its major Middle East ally, Israel
Among these factors is the virtual stranglehold Azerbaijan, having shared borders with both Russia and Iran, could exert on a sizable portion of Moscow’s current land-based trade with Tehran. But of paramount importance, the paper suggests leveraging Azerbaijan’s advantages and capabilities “to exert maximum pressure on Iran to force it to abandon its nuclear program.
The relevance of this for current US policy was underscored by a March 7th declaration on Iran by Trump in an Oval Office press conference when he elaborated on his position concerning Iran, stating: “We’re down to final moments. We’re at final moments. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon…”
“Taking Iran’s nuclear program off the table”
This echoes the position taken in early February, when President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) “taking Iran’s nuclear program off the table” and “restoring maximum pressure on the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, denying Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon.” The memorandum underscores that “President Trump will not tolerate Iran possessing a nuclear weapons capability.”
All of this is good news for Israel, having endured four years of thinly veiled animosity from the Biden presidency and its flaccid appeasement of the ayatollahs’ regime, allowing it to creep ever closer to weaponised nuclear capability.
Of course, even under the restrictive Biden-era diktaats, Israel showed remarkable military capability, once it recovered from the initial shock of the October 7th, Hamas attack,
Indeed, distinguished historian Victor Davis Hanson catalogued these achievements in a recent video.
“If we had this conversation a year ago, and I said to you Iran is going to send 500 projectiles into Israel, only about 1% are going to do anything—and no damage. And in retaliation, Israel is going to send 300 planes and destroy entirely their air defenses. Then, they are going to go into Hezbollah, and they are going to target with pagers and walkie-talkies and blow up 4000 explosions. And then they are going to go into Lebanon, and they are going to destroy the whole apparat ]of] Hezbollah and then they are going into Gaza after October 7th and destroy those terrorist[s], Hamas. And then they are finally going to retaliate [against the] Houthi, and destroy their port facilities and their power grid, and oh by the way, they’re going to so weaken Iran and so weaken Hezbollah that the Syrian Assad arch enemy of the United States is going to fall, no one would believe you.
“Israeli attack worse than a nuclear Iran”
While all this is true, all the Israel action taken under Biden has been largely retaliatory and usually limited in scope, often to specific targets. What is emerging now is that to cripple Iran’s nuclear project, there is a need for strikes on a far wider and more sustained scale. This is an ever-emerging scenario in which Azerbaijan can play a pivotal role, both in terms of intelligence and in the provision of physical facilities. Indeed, it was a Foreign Policy feature article, Israel’s Secret Staging Ground, that raised precisely such a possibility. Citing well-informed sources, it wrote: “I don’t think there’s any doubt — if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they’d probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan”.
Adding substance to this position are reports that the Obama administration deliberately thwarted Israeli plans to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities from Azerbaijan by leaking details of the plan. This motivated John Bolton, who served as America’s UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor, to declare that former Democratic regimes felt that “an Israeli attack [on Iran] is worse than an Iranian nuclear weapon.”
Never more compelling
Of course, today, things are a far cry from that. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of an administration more amenable to Israel and more understanding of the existential threat it faces from Iran.
Clearly, today Israel’s air power has been considerably enhanced both in terms of weaponry, range and refuelling—as recent strikes on Yemen have illustrated. However, including Baku in the effort to eliminate the scourge of an Islamic nuclear bomb, by offering assistance in pre-operation intelligence gathering and in possible post-operation search-and-rescue missions, should any Israeli aircraft be downed.
Accordingly, as the ayatollahs inch closer to their desired doomsday weapon, the rationale for a countervailing triaxial alliance has never been closer—or more compelling.
