Publication

This commentary contends that changes in the international environment and growing concerns about internal stability have prompted the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan to establish closer relations with Russia and open up its cooperation with Iran. The text’s author additionally worries that these foreign policy adjustments will make the regime more authoritarian than it already is and drag it into the geopolitical bloc being built by Russia. Another variable to consider is that Baku may willingly join the emerging anti-Western Russian-Iranian-Turkish concert of powers.