Egyptian newspaper cites Israeli think tank: Azerbaijan sees Iran as an existential threat to its national security

Published: 2025-06-24 09:49

“The rapprochement between the two states (Azerbaijan and Israel) is grounded in shared geopolitical challenges, first and foremost those posed by the Iranian regime,” writes the Egyptian liberal newspaper Al Shorouk, citing an article by the Israeli think tank, the Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA).

“The key difference, however, is that while Israel has long regarded the Shiite fundamentalist regime of the Iranian ayatollahs—who regularly threaten to “wipe” the Jewish state “off the political map of the Middle East”—as an open and declared enemy, Azerbaijan officially maintains what President Ilham Aliyev has termed “working relations” with the new administration in Tehran. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that in Baku—despite formally accepting Iranian leaders’ rhetorical assurances of “good neighborly intentions”—Iran’s imperial ambitions in the eastern segment of the “Greater Middle East” (including the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and the South Caucasus) are perceived as an existential threat to national security,” the newspaper notes.

By Azerbaijani-Israeli Alliance Global News