By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Israeli President Isaac Herzog met May 30 with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the capital, Baku, further strengthening Israel’s partnership with the Shi’ite Muslim country which borders Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran.

The trip comes amid growing strategic and defence ties between the two nations, epitomized by the inauguration of the new Azerbaijani embassy in Israel. Aliyev once compared his country’s relationship with Israel to an iceberg: “Nine-tenths of it is below the surface.” This is no longer the case.

Israel’s Health and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel also accompanied Herzog. The visit saw a bilateral agreement signed on cooperation in healthcare. Aliyev also announced that the sides were actively cooperating in the field of cyber security, without providing further details.

Israel and Azerbaijan opened diplomatic ties in April 1992, six months after the latter declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Israel was one of the first countries in the world to recognize Azerbaijan’s independence and has had an embassy in Baku since 1992.

But only last November did Azerbaijan announce that it would open an embassy in Israel, with Baku naming its former deputy minister of science and education, Mukhtar Mammadov, as the country’s first ambassador. “We do not consider opening an embassy now as an end goal, but the turning of a new page in our relations with Israel,” Mammadov stated.

“The sky is the limit,” for the two countries’ ties, remarked Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev upon landing at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport for a visit a month later.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in Jerusalem March 29, as Baku prepared to open its embassy. “Azerbaijan is a strategic partner of Israel,” Cohen told him.

Baku’s historic decision comes against the background of the growing tension between Azerbaijan and Iran. These increasingly strained ties present an opportunity for Israel, especially in security. After all, Israel and Azerbaijan share the same goals. They both seek to diversify their foreign relations in a hostile neighborhood. And both consider Iran a foe and favor an assertive strategy against Tehran.

“Israel and Azerbaijan share the same perception of the Iranian threats,” said Cohen. “The Iranian ayatollah regime threatens both our regions, finances terrorism and destabilizes the entire Middle East.” (This rhetoric makes Iran nervous and prompted Tehran to complain of the “anti-Iranian orientation” of Azeri diplomacy.)

Azerbaijan’s location on Iran’s border makes it an enticing ally for Israel. Foreign reports have indicated that Baku likely allows Israel to use bases on its soil to launch reconnaissance flights over Iran and to send intelligence operatives into the country to disrupt its nuclear program. In case Israel does decide to carry out air strikes on Iranian reactors and plants, access to Azerbaijani bases would make that task far more feasible.

Another important factor that has allowed the two sides to publicly formalise their relationship has been the Abraham Accords, under which Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates established official ties with Israel in 2020.

“Azerbaijan always took into consideration the position of Arab states. So that’s why, for example, even though Israel opened its embassy in Azerbaijan in 1993, for us, it took a long time to reciprocate despite the fact that we had good bilateral relations,” explained Faris Shafiyev of the Centre of Analysis of International Relations, a think-tank close to the Baku government.

Another primary area of collaboration between Israel and Azerbaijan is in the energy sector. Azerbaijan, a major producer of oil and gas, provides between 30 to 50 percent of Israel’s oil and gas needs, transported mainly through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Of course this realpolitik has led to Israel’s diminished friendship with Armenia, long hostile to Azerbaijan. Jerusalem supported Baku in the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a six-week long conflict with Armenia which claimed the lives of more than 6,000 soldiers and resulted in Baku regaining control over disputed territories in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic.

Israel ambassador to Azerbaijan, George Deek, visited the site of a deadly missile attack during the conflict. “Israel showed we were there with Azerbaijan at a time of need,” he said.

The gesture resonated with the country. “The people of Azerbaijan highly appreciate and will never forget the enduring and consistent support by Israel for Azerbaijan’s just position during the 44-day patriotic war,” Azerbaijan’s interparliamentary friendship group with Israel proclaimed.

Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, who was in Israel for the opening of the embassy, said that his country is “grateful to Israel for the support for Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity during almost thirty years of illegitimate occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories by Armenia.”

But Israel’s more tangible support has come from the weapons it is one of Azerbaijan’s leading arms suppliers. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Israel provided 69 per cent of Baku’s major arms imports from 2016-2020, accounting for 17 per cent of Jerusalem’s overall arms exports over that period. Azerbaijan imported a total of $37 million worth of arms in the years 2020-2022, during which weapons purchased from Israel totaled $22 million.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen recently confirmed that Israel Aerospace Industries will supply Azerbaijan with two satellites at a total cost of $120 million, probably a new version of the company’s Ofek spy satellite. So cooperation continues.