Sign up for our Middle East newsletter and follow us @middleeast for news on the region.
Azerbaijan and Iran — majority Shiite Muslim countries that share strong ethnic and linguistic ties and centuries of history — saw the worst escalation in their tense relations in January when the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran came under an armed attack. That followed Iran’s military buildup on its border with Azerbaijan in a dispute between the neighbors over Israel. The brewing conflict has ramifications for the larger Caucasus region, which is important to Russia and Turkey and crisscrossed by pipelines shipping oil and natural gas to the West.
