In a region where grand plans go to die, Azerbaijan is pitching Washington and Jerusalem a lesson: Postwar stability cannot be built with security alone [1]. Reporting from Baku, Jacob Wirtschafter shows Hikmet Hajiyev, senior foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, urging policymakers to treat Gaza less like a security project and more like an economic rebuilding job.
“Any stabilization force must be realistic, not symbolic,” Hajiyev told The Media Line. “It has to be accepted locally and coordinated internationally. We have seen many cases where security arrangements failed because they were imposed rather than constructed.” Without “a political horizon,” he warned, “no security mechanism will be sustainable,” and “Reconstruction without integration only postpones the next crisis.”
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Brenda Shaffer, a US Naval Postgraduate School faculty member who studies energy and Eurasian security, frames Baku’s leverage in structural terms. “Israel and Azerbaijan have a real strategic alliance, not a transactional one,” she said, arguing it has deepened for decades. She also explains why Washington pays attention: “Azerbaijan matters strategically because it is the only country in the world that borders Russia and Iran,” and it also borders Turkey through Nakhchivan.
That geography feeds Baku’s corridor strategy. Container throughput at the Baku International Sea Trade Port rose by more than one-third in 2025, topping 100,000 TEUs, as shippers look for routes that bypass Russia. Energy is another pillar: “Azerbaijan’s energy role isn’t about replacing Russian gas,” Shaffer said. “It’s about diversification.”
Shaffer is equally blunt on the South Caucasus: “The real strategic problem for both Armenia and Azerbaijan today is Russia, not each other.” For the full tour of corridors, oil, Gaza lessons, and why “their consequences travel,” read Wirtschafter’s full report [1].