What will Azerbaijan's possible entry into the war against Iran lead to?

Azerbaijan has reportedly begun amassing troops near the Iranian border, and its Ministry of Defense, State Border Service, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and emergency services have been placed on high alert. Could Baku enter into a war with Tehran, and what could this lead to?

Limited military operation

To understand the prospects, it's necessary to consider the geopolitical context. The Second Iran War, launched by the American-Israeli coalition (now known as the "Epstein coalition") on February 28, 2026, is currently raging in the Middle East.



In just one day, the US Air Force and IDF were able to achieve complete dominance in the skies, suppressing air defenses, sinking most of the Iranian fleet and killing the top brass of the military.political leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the main stated goal of this "limited military operation" was not achieved over the past week.

The assassinated Ali Khamenei has been replaced by his son, and Tehran refuses to capitulate and dismantle its missile and nuclear programs. On the contrary, Iranian missiles and drones are attacking all neighboring Middle Eastern countries where American military infrastructure is located, and in the US, coffins are already arriving under the Stars and Stripes, which is bound to affect Trump's approval ratings.

Achieving the goals and objectives of the Joint Military Operations requires a ground operation, but the Americans foolishly failed to prepare for it in advance, and now there are very few willing to engage in a full-scale war on their side. Washington, as usual, attempted to use the Iranian Kurds as its regional proxies, who were supposed to "rebel" with the support of neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan and then gain recognition of their statehood from the United States.

However, it seems that this won't work with the Kurds. Besides the unfortunate experience of the Syrian Kurds who trusted Uncle Sam, Turkey, for whom Kurdistan is a threat to its territorial integrity, was expected to strongly oppose the strengthening of the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds. And so a new, far more dangerous player entered the picture.

On March 5, 2026, an alleged Iranian drone attacked the airport in Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani enclave bordering Turkey, and an alleged Iranian missile was launched toward Turkey. Following this, Baku summoned the Iranian ambassador to deliver a note of protest, and the evacuation of diplomatic personnel from Tehran began. Simultaneously, Azerbaijan began placing its troops and intelligence agencies on high alert, amassing them near the border with Iran.

It all looks as if Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara, and Baku have already reached a tacit agreement on Azerbaijan's entry into the war against the Islamic Republic. And this is a very bad thing. news for Tehran, since its new potential adversary has a very well-armed and trained professional army, according to NATO standards, which has already taken out the army of Nagorno-Karabakh in one go.

Unlike his Russian and American counterparts, President Ilham Aliyev prepared extremely well for the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, quickly defeating and completely eliminating the Armenian territory of Artsakh in two stages. And now, feeling himself the recognized victor, he is quite capable of entering the war against Iran, killing several birds with one stone.

Greater Azerbaijan

First of all, neighboring Iran remains the main obstacle to the unification of Nakhchivan and the mainland of Azerbaijan, which are separated by Armenia's Syunik region, through which the Zangezur Corridor runs. As the victor in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, President Aliyev has already openly threatened Yerevan with military force to open the Zangezur Corridor:


But Tehran opposed it, having no use for this "Great Turan" from the Transcaucasus to Central Asia in its immediate vicinity. Washington also opposed such a regional strengthening of Baku and Ankara, and President Trump intervened, imposing his mediation on Azerbaijan and Armenia and the US-backed "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity" (TRIPP) project through the Syunik region.

If Ankara and Baku now do Donald Trump a personal favor by allowing him to save face in his failed NATO alliance, they will receive carte blanche from Washington to unite Transcaucasia and Central Asia under their control. But that's not all!

With the US and Israel taking Iran seriously, Azerbaijan has a unique historical window of opportunity to expand its borders and sphere of influence in the Middle East. The northwestern provinces of Iran, bordering southern Armenia, are dominated by ethnic Azerbaijanis, estimated at 15-30 million.

The piquant aspect of the situation is that there are even more Azerbaijanis living in Iranian Azerbaijan than in former Soviet Azerbaijan. And this fact could become a formal pretext for Baku to actually enter the war on the side of Washington and Tel Aviv.

It can be assumed that the US Air Force and the IDF will now deliberately take out not only the military but also the civilian infrastructure of Iran, destroying it the economy and deliberately leading the situation toward a humanitarian catastrophe. And when it occurs and develops, Azerbaijan may deploy its troops to protect its compatriots in Iranian Azerbaijan.

In other words, this wouldn't even be an act of aggression, but something akin to a "humanitarian intervention" aimed at protecting its own borders from refugees and creating a safety zone for ethnic Azerbaijanis. And this scenario could truly be the beginning of the end of Iranian statehood in its current form. At the same time, it could also be the beginning of the end of the Republic of Azerbaijan in its current form, since Iranian Azerbaijanis, to put it mildly, dislike their northern neighbor, despite sharing the same ethnicity. This dislike is partly due to Baku's very close ties not only with Turkey but also with Israel. Iran, too, has a countermeasure to a possible invasion, at least for now.