Azerbaijan has positioned itself during the war as Israel’s closest Muslim friend and has refrained from criticizing military actions, while supplying oil and even inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Baku. Sources tell “Globes” that until most recently, Azerbaijan has been pushing for a three-way summit in Baku with President Ilham Aliyev hosting Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The recent decision to prevent Netanyahu’s plane from flying over Turkish airspace not only ended hopes of such a summit but also led to the postponement of Netanyahu’s visit to Baku. The prime minister’s bureau declined to comment on the matter.
This is not the first time that Erdogan, who has imposed a trade embargo on Israel, has taken such a step. In November, he prevented the plane carrying President Isaac Herzog from flying over Turkish airspace to the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku. These two actions demonstrate Erdogan’s lack of readiness to agree to Aliyev’s initiative because of anti-Israel sentiment in Turkey.
The Abraham Accords are the target
With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Azerbaijanis began to voice their desire to integrate into the Abraham Accords – an ostensibly strange aim because the Abraham Accords are based on normalization between Israel and countries with which it did not previously have full diplomatic relations – the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco. However, “Globes” can reveal that behind the Azerbaijani thinking is that The Abraham Accords also include the US, and Baku believes that through them the “dam” that exists between them and the US defense industries will be released.
Azerbaijan suffers from difficulties with defense imports from the US. Initially, following the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s, the US banned the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan and Armenia. These restrictions lasted for about a decade, but traditionally Armenia is more favored by the Americans due to the powerful Armenian lobby in Washington.
Thus in November 2023, Congress passed a law called the “Armenia Defense Act of 2023,” which blocks any possibility of the Secretary of State permitting defense sales to Azerbaijan. This was during the Biden administration but since Trump returned to the White House, US envoy Steve Witkoff has already visited Baku. Although this has not led to Azerbaijan joining the Abraham Accords, “Globes” has learned that top officials from US defense giants, like Lockheed Martin and RTX, are already holding meetings in Baku, in the hope that Aliyev’s move will materialize and they will be able to reach approved deals in Washington.
If the move is implemented, the Israeli defense industry could be harmed, as it is a major weapons supplier to Azerbaijan, which invests 5% of GDP in the defense budget. However, senior Baku officials are also working to deepen defense cooperation with Israel. As part of talks with the Defense Ministry, Azerbaijan is striving to have Israeli defense industries transfer as many production lines as possible to its territory to improve technological knowhow and diversify the economy.
The Israel connection
The relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan is one of the closest that Ankara has and is based on the idea of “one nation, two states.” Azerbaijanis are a Turkic people, like Kazakhs and Uzbeks, but closer than all to Turkey – hence the depth of the connection. In addition, the parties have common interests. The very close connection between Aliyev and Netanyahu and between him and Erdogan has led to several rounds of discussions in Baku between senior Israeli and Turkish officials, mediated by Azerbaijanis.
The authorities in Azerbaijan under Aliyev’s leadership have undergone a fundamental change. Following the final defeat of Armenia and the return of all of Karabakh in September 2023, senior Baku officials came to the realization that attention should be paid to sustainable development in a number of areas. This is reflected, for example, in “Globes” report that the Innovation and Digital Development Agency of Azerbaijan (IDDA) is offering Israeli startups that relocate to the country a full exemption from corporate tax, property tax, land tax, and dividends tax for a decade.
Moving closer to the US
When it comes to foreign policy vis-à-vis the US, Azerbaijan believes that the road to Washington passes through Israel. As first reported by “Globes,” Azerbaijan’s oil and gas company, SOCAR, acquired a 10% stake in the Tamar offshore gas field from Israeli businessman Aaron Frenkel in January. US giant Chevron has a 25% stake in Tamar, and it is well known that US President Donald Trump has deep ties to senior figures in the US energy industry.
SOCAR was not satisfied with just the Tamar field and in March signed up with Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure for gas exploration licenses in Israel as part of a consortium in which SOCAR is the operator, alongside its partners BP and Israel’s NewMed Energy (TASE: NWMD). The licenses were awarded to the winning group in Cluster I, which covers an area of 1,700 square kilometers in Israel’s northern economic waters.
When SOCAR approached the Israeli gas market, it looked, among other things, at the ability to connect a pipeline to Turkey. Of the approximately 10.09 BCM produced from the Tamar reservoir in 2024, 34% was sold to Jordan – the Hashemite Kingdom is crossed from south to north by the Fajr gas pipeline, which connects to Syria as far as Homs and from there branches off to Tripoli in Lebanon and Banias in western Syria. According to estimates, the cost of connecting from Homs to the Turkish gas infrastructure would be about $200 million, a sum that is not expensive in industry terms. Now, with the historic meeting between the US President and his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa, Azerbaijan hopes that it “bet” correctly.
