The United States, through its joint air campaign with Israel that began on Feb 28th, is seeking to reshape the nature of the Iranian regime, and President Donald Trump has indicated that this effort will rely on actors from within the country rather than external imposition. Achieving this objective will require Washington to help coalesce a domestic coalition capable of steering the Islamic Republic in a more pragmatic direction. Any durable post-Khamenei order will need to account for Iran’s demographic realities, particularly the political weight of the country’s largest ethnic Azeri minority. In that context, Azerbaijan—given its ethnic, cultural, and geographic linkages to Iran’s Azeris—emerges as a critical partner with whom Washington should accelerate its expanding strategic alignment.
On March 5th, Azerbaijan’s Foreign and Defense ministries reported that multiple Iranian drones were launched toward the enclave of Nakhchivan, with one crashing into the airport’s passenger terminal, another striking near a school, and Azerbaijani forces disabling at least one of the four incoming drones.
Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, in a national address, accused Iran of committing an “unprovoked act of terror and aggression,” announcing that he had ordered Azerbaijan’s armed forces to move to the highest level of combat readiness and prepare retaliatory options. Aliyev added that Tehran understands that the "independent Azerbaijani state today is a source of hope for Azerbaijanis in Iran.” In response to the escalating tensions, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov confirmed that instructions had been issued to evacuate both Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate general in Tabriz. Separately, on March 6th, Baku’s State Security Service arrested a number of individuals in connection with an IRGC plot to stage terrorist attacks targeting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, the Israeli embassy in Baku, an Ashkenazi synagogue, and an Azerbaijani Jewish leader.
Exactly a month before the United States began targeting Iran with airstrikes, I wrote that Washington could best manage the decaying Islamic Republic via Azerbaijan. At the time, the Trump White House was still giving diplomacy a chance with a regime that had brutally crushed protests that broke out on an unprecedented scale beginning Dec 28th. The Trump administration’s August 9 move to mediate the Azerbaijan–Armenia peace deal in an effort to stabilize the South Caucasus had positioned the United States to manage better long-term instability along Iran’s northwest frontier. A critical prerequisite for this was for Congress to repeal Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, an outdated provision that restricts U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan and undermines the development of a full strategic partnership between the two countries.
Now that the Trump Administration has shifted from diplomacy to the use of force against Iran, the strategic case for removing Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act has become far more urgent. As Washington seeks to shape both the leadership dynamics and the external behavior of the Iranian regime, it will require reliable regional partners positioned along Iran’s periphery. Azerbaijan, bordering Iran’s sensitive northwest and maintaining deep ethnic linkages with millions of Iranian Azerbaijanis, is uniquely situated to play that role. Section 907, an anachronistic piece of legislation, undermines the very regional leverage the United States now needs as it escalates pressure on Tehran.
From Iran’s perspective, the northwestern frontier is the most politically sensitive of its borderlands because it is home to the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Azerbaijanis, who comprise roughly a quarter of the population and live in provinces abutting Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkey. The regime is especially wary because Iranian Azeri regions lie in relatively close geographic proximity to areas populated by Iranian Kurds, who are reportedly mobilizing for an armed uprising that could ignite a broader insurgency across the northwest. In such circumstances, Tehran fears that external actors might exploit ethnic and geographic fault lines to intensify pressure on the regime from within. It is therefore no coincidence that Iran chose to strike Turkey on March 4 and Azerbaijan on March 5, moves intended to signal to both neighboring states that they must stay out of the escalating conflict.
For years, Iran has viewed the deepening strategic relationship between Azerbaijan and Israel with growing alarm, fearing that Israeli access along its northern flank could translate into intelligence and military pressure against the Islamic Republic. Tehran’s concerns intensified when Turkey aligned decisively with Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War, helping Baku defeat Iran’s longtime regional partner, Armenia, and dramatically shifting the regional balance of power. The situation has been compounded by the erosion of Russia’s traditional dominance in the South Caucasus following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has created new geopolitical space for outside actors. Into this fluid environment has stepped the United States through initiatives such as the Trump Route for International Peace & Prosperity, developments that collectively reinforce Tehran’s perception that the regional order along its northern frontier is turning against it.
As far as Iran is concerned, the most acute territorial vulnerability lies along an arc stretching southwest from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Iraq, a corridor forming its northwestern and western flank. This region has historically served as the principal gateway through which rival powers have projected force into the Iranian plateau. As a land conflict begins to emerge here, Tehran is likely to exhibit particular hostility in this zone, even while it is simultaneously targeting Arab countries and Israel in retaliation for the U.S.–Israeli air campaign. Iranian strategic thinking has therefore long treated this western and northwestern arc as the country’s most historically exposed and politically sensitive approach to external threats.
For the Islamic Republic of Iran, the northwestern frontier represents not only an external strategic vulnerability but also a deeply rooted domestic challenge in the form of its Azeri population, concentrated in provinces bordering Azerbaijan and historically embedded in Iranian political and cultural life. Since the Safavid era, Azeris have played influential roles at pivotal moments in Iran’s history and have consistently shaped Iran’s trajectory. Their demographic weight and cross‑border ethnic ties mean that unrest in northwest Iran would have immediate domestic and regional implications, a dynamic underscored by Aliyev’s assertion that an independent Azerbaijan serves as a model of hope for many Iranian Azeris. Thus, as the Iranian regime evolves, Azerbaijan is poised to exert meaningful influence over the post‑theocratic shaping of the Iranian state.
Azerbaijan has a strategic interest in a stable and friendly regime in Tehran, as it ensures security along its southern border and protects cross‑border economic and cultural linkages. Contrary to some assumptions, Iranian Azeris do not exhibit separatist tendencies; historically, they have sought to influence and shape Iran’s political mainstream rather than break away from the state. This enduring orientation makes them a potential bridge for external actors seeking to engage Iran’s political evolution without fostering fragmentation or insurgency. Recognizing this, the Trump administration would be well‑advised to use the current moment of regime vulnerability to deepen ties with Azerbaijan, leveraging the Iranian Azeri community as a critical component in efforts to reshape the political character of the Islamic Republic.
Bokhari, PhD is a Senior Director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy in Washington. Bokhari teaches Eurasian Geopolitics and Central Asia in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University