The South Caucasus is emerging as a dangerous geopolitical flashpoint, where fraying alliances, foreign interference, and internal instability could soon ignite a broader regional conflict.

It is not hard to answer the question, who might “Open up the Israeli-American-Iranian Conflict” from another front but this begs the question as exactly when and how? This brings us back to the constantly shifting geopolitical winds of the South Caucasus, the relationship between Moscow and Baku remains complicated, especially for outsiders—and even for those closely observing, the goal posts are always being moved!

I have trouble teasing out the current Moscow-Baku relationship. It is probably most straightforward to imagine the leadership of both governments holding cynical attitudes. They are seeking to, prioritize power and control above all, and therefore engaging in business as usual relationships. Somehow, however, those transactions have been less than favorable to Putin and Aliyev in recent months.

Why so?

All the while transactional and seemingly pragmatic acts on the surface, as explained by Western media outlets as a “tit-for-tat”, recent events suggest a more complex, possibly fraying dynamic cords of discord. However, it is much too simplistic, even naïve, to connect the tragic downing of an Azeri aircraft in December as one of the main causes to cast a long shadow over recent cooperation and win-win deals. There is much more involved here, and it points to Israel and Iran for starters.

Sergey Mironov, Chairman of the Fair Russia – For Truth party, recently questioned, “Who benefits from the Russophobic hysteria that is currently being whipped up in Baku?

Strategic and Regional Harmony

Seemingly both Presidents Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev seem to be struggling to reestablish a sense of strategic and regional harmony. It is tempting to view both leaders through a realist lens—authoritarians driven by power dynamics, calculating their moves with cynical precision, as in Game Theory, but this approach does not fully explain the odd imbalance of recent months, as something else; other forces are at play, albeit in the........

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