Azerbaijan is the largest and militarily strongest of the three south Caucasus countries (alongside Armenia and Georgia), situated between the Black and Caspian seas. It is oil-rich, though its GDP per person is below that of Armenia, which has none of its natural resources. The capital is Baku. The country is led by Ilham Aliyev, who has been president since 2003.
Azerbaijan has an exclave called Nakhchivan, which borders Iran and Turkey. It has a roughly 2m-strong diaspora in Russia.
Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijani territory that was occupied by Armenia since the early 1990s. In 2020 Azerbaijan fought a 44-day war to retake some of the territory and its surroundings. Russia brokered a ceasefire that allowed it to deploy troops in Azerbaijan under the guise of peacekeepers. The armistice also envisaged a road and rail corridor across sovereign Armenian territory to connect Azerbaijan's main territory with Nakhchivan, with the FSB controlling the corridor.
In 2023, with Russia distracted by its war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan recaptured all of Nagorno-Karabakh in less than 24 hours while Russian peacekeepers stood by. Some 100,000 ethnic Armenians left the territory. With no pretext for them to stay, Russia was compelled to withdraw its peacekeepers.
On August 8th 2025 Donald Trump hosted Ilham Aliyev and Armenia's prime minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House, where the trio signed a peace declaration. Armenia agreed to open an American-operated transport corridor to Nakhchivan, called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), on a 99-year lease to America. Trump waived sanctions introduced in 1992 that had prohibited military co-operation with Azerbaijan, and announced a "strategic partnership". The boss of SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state energy firm, signed a deal with ExxonMobil during the visit. Aliyev and Pashinyan initialled a formal peace treaty but did not sign it; Azerbaijan's demand that Armenia amend its constitution to remove references to Nagorno-Karabakh remains outstanding. Aliyev has indulged in irredentist rhetoric, including calling Armenia "West Azerbaijan".
America used to pressure Aliyev to release political prisoners, but that ceased after Donald Trump returned to power in 2025. Trump's family has business ties with the Azerbaijani elite. After Trump's return, Aliyev shut down what remained of independent media; around 100 journalists fled the country or are in jail. Meydan TV, an independent Azerbaijani outlet, now operates from exile. America used to fund hundreds of independent media groups in countries with shaky civil liberties; Trump froze that funding, hobbling Meydan among many other outlets. See press freedom.
Azerbaijan is armed by both Turkey and Israel. It supplies most of Israel's oil and buys Israeli weapons systems, which it used to devastating effect in its wars with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. Israel sees Azerbaijan as a strategic ally in its conflict with Iran. Azerbaijan has been contemplating joining the Abraham Accords.
Since recapturing Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan has sought to deal with Moscow as an equal rather than a subordinate, challenging Russia's view of the south Caucasus as its sphere of influence.
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