“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 U.S. presidential elections in November set the proverbial cat out among the pigeons. Suddenly, what previously appeared impossible—or, at best, highly improbable—looks increasingly feasible.
This seems particularly true concerning the Iranian nuclear program and the chances of defusing the danger it presents.
In this regard, 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 the Israeli think tank Besa (the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies) featured 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.
Indeed, the Iranian paper mentions a more recent paper, published by the very same think-tank, articulating, 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 American and Israeli strategic interests—has increased even further. It lists several possibilities in which Baku’s capabilities can be leveraged to benefit the more robust American administration and its major Middle East ally: Israel.
Among these factors is the 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, is 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 U.S. policy was underscored by a declaration on Iran, dated March 7, 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 … . ”
This echoes the position taken in early February when 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 weaponized nuclear capability.
Of course, even under the restrictive Biden-era diktats, Israel showed remarkable military capability, once it recovered from the initial shock of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Indeed, distinguished historian Victor Davis Hanson cataloged these achievements in a recent video, saying:
“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 4,000 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 Oct. 7 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.”
While all this is true, the Israel action taken under former President Joe 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, the author of the 2012 piece, Mark Perry, 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 has served as a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser, to declare that former Democratic leaders felt that “an Israeli attack [on Iran] is worse than an Iranian nuclear weapon.”
Of course, today, things are a far cry from that point. 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 refueling—as illustrated by recent strikes on Yemen. However, including Baku in the effort to eliminate the scourge of an Islamic nuclear bomb, by offering assistance in pre-operation intelligence gathering and possible post-operation search-and-rescue missions, should any Israeli aircraft be downed, would provide another layer of strength.
Accordingly, as the ayatollahs inch closer to their desired doomsday weapon, the rationale for a countervailing tri-axial alliance has never been closer—or more compelling.