Just when you think the Western Zionists are backed into a corner, they come out swinging in a whole new theater. We’ve been warning about US-Israeli machinations in the South Caucasus for the better part of two years, and it now appears that Azerbaijan, Türkiye, and Armenia are beginning to play their hands (although the latter’s hand might be being played for it). Crackdowns are intensifying, Türkiye is cutting major deals with the West (always an ominous sign in that transactional relationship), Azerbaijan is suddenly at odds with both Iran and Russia, and the Armenian prime minister is even offering to show people his penis. And Washington is right in the middle of it, offering to administer a contentious corridor cutting through southern Armenia that would have far reaching effects.
There’s a lot to unpack and the full meaning and extent of US-Israeli involvement is hazy, but what’s clear is preparations are underway for some major shaking up of the South Caucasus and beyond. Today I wanted to take a look at goings-on with Azerbaijan, its relationship with Russia, and how it fits into Washington-Tel Aviv’s plans. On Wednesday, we’ll take a closer look at Armenia and Türkiye.
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Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev was once described in a Wikileaks US diplomatic cable as an unpredictable hothead similar to Sonny Corleone. That seemed like a mischaracterization in recent years as he calmly navigated the New Cold War, but he might finally be living up to that billing.
Not only is Azerbaijan allowing its territory to be used by Israel to launch attacks on Iran, but relations between Baku and Moscow have gone in the toilet, which also has major implications for the destabilization campaign against Tehran and the entire Eurasian landmass as the country is one of the most important transport and logistics hub in the region.
Let’s start back on Christmas Day. That’s when Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 went down and Baku’s relationship with Moscow did an about-face. The plane, which was traveling from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in the Russian region of Chechnya, ran into trouble over Russia and made an emergency landing in Aktau, Kazakhstan, in which 38 of the 67 people on board were killed. The black box data was extracted and is still being analyzed, but within hours of the crash media in the US and Europe were quick to point the finger at Russia. That was unsurprising.
What was eyebrow raising was that the president of Azerbaijan — whose country has maintained strong ties with Russia despite the with-us-or-against-us Western pressure in recent years — was on the same page as the Western media.
President Ilham Aliyev made strong accusations against Russia in the days after the crash. In his comments, he notably does not once mention Ukrainian drones, which were being launched against civilian infrastructure in the region at the time of the plane downing. That might help explain how Russia accidentally shot at the plane — if that’s indeed what happened as Aliyev claims. It’s unclear why Aliyev doesn’t mention the possibility that shrapnel from a Ukrainian drone could have caused the damage to the plane. And it’s entirely possible—if not likely—that Ukraine and its Western partners made a premeditated move to launch a swarm of drones that coincided with the attempted plane landing, with the hope of causing this type of accident.
While Aliyev no doubt has public opinion to worry about after such an awful incident, is it not odd that even if his theory is 100 percent correct, he wouldn’t at least try to soften the blow against his ally Russia and present Ukraine as at least partially responsible? Instead Kiev is largely getting a free pass as public anger is directed at Moscow. For what it’s worth, Aliyev’s theory of what happened is the same as US officials quoted in American media.
Let’s fast forward to the ‘12-Day War.’ It is widely known that Israel used and continues to use Azerbaijan as a forward operating base for intelligence operations into Iran and to launch drones. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently “urged” Aliyev to investigate the issue. Aliyev denies any involvement. Okay then.
Regardless, Baku and Tel Aviv are tight with Azerbaijan a key supplier of fossil fuels (transported through Türkiye) powering the genocide in Gaza and in return receiving Israeli tech and weapons like loitering munitions that gave Azerbaijan the upper hand in its conflicts with Armenia. Cooperating with the Zionists against Iran isn’t surprising; but with Baku’s turn against Moscow the chessboard in the Caucasus is being overturned.
What ties all of the outside actors together in the Azerbaijan-Armenia-Türkiye sandwich is the battle for control over a key logistics corridors in the south Caucasus—the so-called Zangezur Corridor.
It would link Azerbaijan to its Türkiye-bordered exclave of Nakhchivan and stretch parallel to Armenia’s border with Iran. It is the missing link in what would be the shortest land transport route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. And key to many involved parties is not only the shorter distance but the fact that it’s one of the few routes that entirely bypasses Russia and it would weaken Iran by opening an interlocked Turkic front across its northern borders. This so-called “Turan Corridor” is a major concern of Tehran for economic and defense reasons. From Security & Defence Quarterly:
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Azerbaijan used to pay 15 percent of the 350 million cubic metres of gas sent to Nakhchivan through Iran as a transit fee. With the opening of the new corridor, Iran may lose this profit.
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An agreement on sale of gas was signed between Türkiye and Iran in 1996. Based on that agreement, Türkiye has been buying gas from Iran for years. While Türkiye pays Iran US$490 for a thousand cubic metres of gas, it can buy the same amount from Azerbaijan for US$335.
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If a gas pipeline is built from Azerbaijan to Türkiye through this corridor, Iran’s loss of gas revenue may be huge.
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The planned gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan through Iran to Türkiye then to Europe was frozen in 2017 because of financial disagreements. Turkmenistan can now deliver this gas to Europe via Azerbaijan.
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The importance of Iran’s pipeline to Armenia has also decreased.
The Strategic Council of Foreign Relations in Tehran, whose director is Iran’s former minister of foreign affairs Kamal Kharazi, condemned the construction of the Zangezur corridor, indicating that the corridor has been introduced as NATO’s “Turan corridor,” a project ostensibly supported by Israel and NATO, which aims to foment ethnic unrest in the areas of Iran inhabited by Turks. As per the aforementioned Council, NATO’s Turan corridor is supposed to directly bring NATO onto the northern border of Iran, the southern border of Russia, and western China and lay the groundwork for their disintegration.
Makes sense. Here’s where it gets tricky. Russia and Iran have been at odds over the opening of these corridors (the Zangezur that would in theory create the Turan) with Moscow in support.
Moscow, which until about a year ago, was on good terms with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and envisioned itself playing a major role in unlocking these transportation networks that would benefit Russia. Point 9 of the trilateral statement signed between Azerbaijan, Russia, and Armenia in 2020 following Russia’s brokering the peace to end the Second Karabakh War, reads:
All economic and transport links in the region shall be unblocked. The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the safety of transport communication between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic with a view to organize the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions. Control over transport communication shall be exercised by the Border Guard Service bodies of the FSS of Russia.
But now Armenia and Azerbaijan have both at least partially weaponized crises against Moscow, which calls into doubt Russian involvement in any Zangezur Corridor project.
Armenia, for its part is way ahead of Azerbaijan in turning on Moscow. It blamed Russia for not coming to its aid more forcefully in its conflicts with Azerbaijan. While one can sympathize with that sentiment, let’s review some other key details:
- It was Armenia that moved peace talks to Western platforms, and it was during those meetings that Armenia agreed to officially recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
- Once Armenia did so (and PM Pashinyan declared so publicly), the die was cast. Nagorno-Karabakh was (and is) recognized as Azerbaijani territory by the international community but was overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Armenians. Roughly 100,000 of them fled to Armenia after Azerbaijan blockaded the region for months and then moved militarily to assert control in September —an operation that resulted in hundreds of deaths.
- Despite moving the negotiation process under the guidance of the West and publicly recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, the Pashinyan government has sought to lay all the blame for its loss at the feet of Russia.
It quickly became apparent why. Armenian officials are arguing that since the 2020 Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement included provisions about Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and their control over a corridor that ran from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh fell apart, the rest of the document is essentially null and void That means no Russian involvement in any Zangezur Corridor. We’ve since heard Armenian officials discuss alternatives like private security forces or Russia monitoring from afar—whatever that means. Among a series of downgrades to Russia’s presence in Armenia, on January 1, Russian border guards withdrew from the Armenian-Iranian border checkpoint at Yerevan’s request. (Since 1992 Armenia’s borders with Türkiye and Iran had been the responsibility of Russian troops.)
There are now reports emerging that “the US is ready to take over the administration of the Zangezur Corridor, potentially resolving one of the most contentious disputes between Azerbaijan and Armenia.” It’s presented as some benign intervention by Washington to unlock peace between the two sides, but if you’ve been following this story the past few years, it’s clear this geopolitical power play was the plan all along, and it looks like it’s getting close.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking to journalists Saturday aboard his flight back from a visit to Azerbaijan, said that Armenia is now willing to engage in regional economic projects, particularly Zangezur.
“Although Armenia initially opposed the Zangezur Corridor, it has begun to show a more flexible stance, recognizing the potential for economic integration. The development of this region presents an opportunity not just for Azerbaijan, but also for Armenia, for Türkiye, Iran, and other neighboring countries,” he said.
While Armenia had previously resisted the opening of the corridor (and it’s still not 100 percent clear it’s on board, but it certainly appears that way), Azerbaijan still insisted upon honoring the 2020 agreement that would see Russian involvement.
Yet Baku’s recent ratcheting up of tensions with Moscow is likely to serve the same purpose as what Armenia did in the aftermath of Nagorno-Karabakh—to provide an excuse to shove Russia out of the project. And issues keep popping up to deepen the Azerbaijan-Russia spat:
On June 27, two Azerbaijani brothers Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov were detained in a Yekaterinburg raid conducted by local Russian law enforcement. Both died during the police detention.
In response Azerbaijan conducted a search at the Baku office of Russian media Sputnik’s Azerbaijan office, and declared its activities illegal.
Azerbaijani police dragged Russian nationals into court after their arrest. Their faces were severely swollen and bruised. Some were bleeding.
The massive state media presence there to document it shows this abuse was meant for broadcast. pic.twitter.com/xHnMYYYqni
— Lindsey Snell (@LindseySnell) July 1, 2025
In addition, Azerbaijan canceled all cultural events planned in the country that were related to Russia or Russian performers and artists. According to information circulated by Oxu.az and other pro-government media, unofficial notices allegedly announcing the gradual closure of Russian-language schools have appeared in some school parents’ WhatsApp groups.
Russia looked to send a response on July 3 with the the arrest of another prominent Azeri:
🇷🇺🚨 **Big deal in Moscow: Vaqif Suleymanov, Azeri mafia boss, arrested.**
According to Russian media, he is **one of the most powerful criminal leaders in Azerbaijan**, with extensive networks across Russia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. His arrest represents **a strong…
— marco orio (@Marcorio61O) July 3, 2025
To coincide with this latest row, Azerbaijani media are airing reports that based upon the contents of an anonymous letter received by Minval.az the Russian Ministry of Defense issued instructions to attack the plane that went down on Christmas Day as part of a broader strategy. What exactly that strategy from the Russian side would be remains unclear. It’s really quite difficult to see how intentionally downing a passenger aircraft of an ally would serve Russian interests, but what do I know?
This all does, however, serve the interests of those wanting to open a Turkic corridor stretching into Central Asia. As Azerbaijani political analyst Elkhan Shahinoglu says:
“In light of these events, we must undoubtedly strengthen our alliance with Türkiye. The Turkish military base in Azerbaijan is necessary so that, in case of pressure from Iran or Russia, they see the Türkiye-Azerbaijan alliance standing before them.”
Just how involved the US is in all of this? Hard to tell, but let’s just say it’s all coming up roses for Washington right now. We can go all the way back to then-U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affair, James O’Brien’s Nov. 15, 2023 comments during “The Future of Nagorno-Karabakh” House committee hearing for insight on the US intentions regarding these corridors. Here’s what O’Brien said:
“A future that is built around the access of Russia and Iran as the main participants in the security of the region, the South Caucasus, is unstable and undesirable, including for both the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia. They have the opportunity to make a different decision now.”
Like so much else, this strategy has carried over into the Trump administration—albeit with a twist, which in this case is another notch on Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize campaign belt.
The Trump administration is advancing a proposal that would introduce a U.S.-run commercial operator as a neutral guarantor of the Zangezur Corridor. The corridor would connect mainland Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave, providing Baku with a direct overland route. According…
— CaucasusWarReport (@Caucasuswar) July 2, 2025
We’ll see if this proposal has legs. Judging by years of groundwork, one would bet it does. More to come on Wednesday.
Forget about Iran/Israel for a second.
Russia is just going to allow Nato to open up a US controlled logistics highway connecting Turkiye directly to the shores of the Caspian sea? After the Ukraine war?
Utter insanity.
What is needed here is to mobilize half a million for an SMO against Azerbaijan, occupy at the very least the western half of it, if not the whole, return Karabakh to Armenia and situate troops there too, and make sure Turkey is blocked from access to Central Asia and a direct land link with Iran is secured.
Meanwhile Iran has to go in from the south to help.
Yes, things are that bad geostrategically here
And they have full legal justification after Iran was attacked from there. Russia too — drones have been flying into southern Russia from Azerbaijan for quite a while now, even if it was all hushed up.
But the sclerotic, corrupt, and compromised by split loyalties spineless cowards in the Kremlin don’t have it in them.
I’m all for fun shooty gun-gun but your suggestion plays right into Washington’s plan to stretch Moscow thin.
I have confidence Russia’s military-industrial complex could handle the production necessary to do so, as well as the population’s ability to contribute bodies, but at some point there’ll be too many pots on the stove.
And, possibly, as soon as they did that in the Caucasus area, NATO would ramp up the games around Finland and the Baltics.
Aren’t US/NATO/Israel also a bit thin these days?
Which raises an interesting question in terms of WWIII – how does a bunch of countries working on starting fights but all overloaded play out?
I called it “ramping up games” in lieu of any idea how it would be conventional warfare.
Then again…have to take everything US/NATO/Israel claims with a grain of salt. They think misdirection is everything, but bluffs grow old.
What is the alternative?
NATO shoveling Islamists into Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus and eventually moving in directly too.
Do you have a choice in that situation?
You don’t.
And there would be no stretching thin if business is properly taken care of in Ukraine, which it is not for the same internal dysfunction and suspect loyalties at the highest level reasons that the situation in the southern Caucasus and Central Asia was allowed to get to the current point.
One thing at a time. First, Moscow must resolve the Ukraine ‘problem.’
Second, what happens if Israel is stupid enough to restart the Twelve Day ++ War? Iran finishes off Israel? Then a pivot to the Caucasus?
Lots to unpack here.
I agree with your general point, re: the overly cautious and timid nature of Russia (and Iran even more so), but having said that; one war at a time.
As I’ve mentioned, back in the day circumstances forced me to take a position teaching graduate educational computational linguistics at a well-known wannabe Ivy institution. To my chagrin, the composition of my students shifted quickly from aspiring language teachers to spooks.
Ca. 1988, one of my spook students proposed a linguistically interesting n-gram analysis of the the languages of the Caucasus. It was based on a dozen-odd translations of the bible that the Summer Institute of Linguistics (a Mormon-dominated operation) had made into languages of the Caucasus. At the time, there were dozens, if not hundreds of different languages scattered through its mountain hollers.
Per Wikipedia, taxonomical linguists have not yet been able to satisfactorily categorize these languages into language families; many are simply considered unrelated to each other. Consequently, political organization in region will probably depend heavily on the penetration of first-world languages into the region as second languages. Thanks to previous missionary work by the SIL, CIA, NSA, and the Playboy Channel, English seems to have the edge.
That 1988 dissertation was unsurprising, given the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but US involvement in the Caucasus goes back at least to the early 1920s when the young Averell Harriman negotiated a deal for joint Georgian manganese mining with Leon Trotsky. The mine was in Stalin’s native Georgia, so when the deal went public, it ran into some rough weather. Harriman was very appreciative of Trotsky’s refund of Harriman’s investment in full. Stalin, probably not so much.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics was a central player via its missionaries, (comparable in a way to the Rothschild funded and Oxford Univ. printed Scofield Bible for American Evangelicals) in preparing the ground for the Rockefeller led US takeover of the resource rich territories of the Amazon as depicted by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett’s Thy Will Be Done; Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. I remembered the river barges full of container shipped flora and fauna of the jungle on their way to classified US laboratories in their search for the exotic poisons and mind altering substances of the cold war era to poison Castro or capture the human brain for MkUltra as I read about the search from wet market to bat cave for the central casting of our ongoing expedition towards what Rudolf Steiner forecast as the war of all against all.
To me, this seems like more Empire of Chaos shenanigans. At present (and I believe, for the foreseeable future), all three of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia are entirely untrustworthy, and may well bite whatever hand is foolish enough to feed them. It makes 🇬🇪 Georgia staying out of the whole mess even more impressive.
Any stable-ish transport corridor will have to either bend south to Iran or north to Russia
Aserbeidshan is a curious country. Until the 19th century when it became part of the Russian empire it has always belonged to greater Persia. Persia not as an ethnic entity but as a distinct and very influential culture. An “empire of the mind” as the British author Axworthy as called it. Aserbeidshani is a Turk language but there are more Aserbeidshani speakers in Iran than in Aserbeidshan. Which begs the question: what will be stronger, the Iranian identity of the Aserbeidshani minority or the strictly linguistic identity? The “Sonny Corleone” of Aserbeidshan as President Aliyev has been called, the US and Israel are banking on the latter. I wouldn´t be so sure. Khamenei is an Aserbeidshani and so is a great if not disproportionate part of the Iranian leadership. Also Moscow is approaching the end game in Ukraine and will soon have forces to spare. It is quite a risky game that Aliyev is playing…
Just yesterday I was watching a Youtube between Nima and Iranian professor Marandi where the latter said that Iranians were very angry about the Azerbaijan involvement in the 12 day war and that Aliyev best watch his back–in short a direct threat.
And we all know what happened to Sonny Corleone.
My mistake. This from today’s Links is the Marandi talk I watched–with Diesen.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/seyed-m-marandi-israel-prepares-proxies?
Israel’s system of allies is like an onion – peel one layer and there’s another, some more surface and others deep…and it stinks.
..real onions elicit tears in real humans
Azerbaijan (population 10m or so) is 65% Shia, so in terms of religion there is a much closer link with Shia Iran than with Sunni Turkiye.
There is a huge Azeri diaspora in Russia; officially about 500k, but unofficially up to 2m. So if things get really nasty, Russia has the option (if Trump can do it, so can Putin) of rounding them up and sending them home to Baku…..causing instant disaster for Aliyev’s regime.
Some of these much-touted transport corridors make no sense whatsoever, in particular the Rube Goldberg scheme that transports goods by truck and rail across Central Asia, unloads them in a Kazakhstan port, ships them across the Caspian, re-loads them onto a train at a port near Baku, and then transports them anew across the Caucasus (difficult terrain, not great infrastructure) to unload at a port in Turkiye (a country with sketchy infrastructure and politics, but a world leader in monetary inflation) and then re-load onto ships heading to destinations westward. Too many moving parts. It’s almost as batty as the proposed IMEC (the one starting from India with a key trans-shipment node in Israel, which for obvious reasons doesn’t seem like such a brilliant idea anymore).
The long and narrow Zangezur corridor is only feasible if both Iran and Russia agree to it. If neither derive any benefit, then they are unlikely to tolerate its existence (especially given the ease with which it could be shut down by mysterious drone attacks). The idea of the faraway USA somehow guaranteeing the security of this corridor (how?) is unrealistic.
However much the collective west desires overland trade routes that bypass Russia/Iran, reality keeps intruding in the form of geography. Aliyev would be well advised to study maps and be wary of Erdogan.
Alexander Mercourios was talking about the situation here and was saying that Azerbaijan and Turkiye and Armenia never been natural allies so is likely an ad hoc alliance. Maybe more so with Erdogan who likes to play these games no matter the damage to his country. And I think that he mentioned that Russia has hit some sort of refinery in the Ukraine which Azerbaijan was using for their oil. Still, Russia and Iran know how to play the long game and there will be a price to pay by these countries and will not allow a situation where the US starts to deploy bases in this area. Who knows what proxy forces can be found in this region to disrupt any plans
The US is good at finding patsies as cannon fodder. The bribed leaders slink away in a few years, and leave the used hollowed out husk drying in the sun. In the queue I see the Baltic States, Finland, Georgia, Tajikistan, Romania…the opportunities are endless, without even thinking about East Asia.
“And issues keep popping up to deepen the Azerbaijan-Russia spat:”
One of those issues probably is the Russian destruction of Ukrainian oil refineries working on oil from Azerbaijan.
I didn’t find a further reference to the penis thing in the article, so I looked it up. Apparently he was accused by a cleric of secretly being circumcised, which would mean that he was also secretly a member of a big evil… something, I wasn’t entirely clear on what. Rather than simply writing the cleric off as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, the PM apparently took this sufficiently seriously that he felt compelled to offer to whip it out in order to refute the accusation.
None of which seems related to the article except as a reminder that the cultural context is different in the region, and we can’t necessarily assume that normal common sense assumptions apply. I guess we already know that from current events in the US, but every country is stupid in its own particular way.
Daniel Davis’ latest interview with Col Douglas McGregor examines the wider strategic implications of this, including a speed up of the war in Ukraine, citing the recent speech by Putin. “Putin and Nato: Both want War”. I found this to be one of MacGregor’s most clarifying, and darkest, interviews.
With enough deep dives into sordid histories and when all is said and done, it’s a challenge to declare who “the good guys” are supposed to be.
looking forward to your next piece, which i am certain includes Pashinyan’s attacks on the Armenian church (not dissimilar to Zelensky’s on Ukrainian Orthodoxy).
was here when they elected this lout – am here now. armenians themselves are the highest of civilization i have seen, based on basic human values. of course they are targeted, and have been compromised.
https://youtu.be/dxgto0bBmDs?si=5kQvQPx3j-Gb3CtC