The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza present Iran with a unique opportunity to advance its foreign policy interests in the Middle East. With the signing of the Abraham Accords, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel and established diplomatic ties, a major achievement for Israel and the Sunni Gulf states, which share a common threat posed by Iran’s assertive regional policies.
In March 2023, Azerbaijan finally opened an embassy in Israel, despite having established bilateral relations in 1992. After Baku restored its territorial integrity, it chose to open an embassy in Tel Aviv. The following month, in April 2023, Israel opened an embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, making it the closest Israeli embassy to Iran, just 17 km from the Iranian border. Iran watched all these diplomatic moves with irritation and concern.
Normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was also widely discussed as an extension of the Abraham Accords. Momentum to normalize tense relations between Israel and Turkey also grew in 2022. At their next meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to continue developing relations and to hold reciprocal official visits.
Azerbaijan’s efforts to establish a new format for tripartite cooperation among Azerbaijan, Israel, and Turkey were moving ahead apace in an environment of geopolitical uncertainty for Tehran. The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel disrupted Saudi-Israeli and Turkish-Israeli relations, providing Iran with an opportunity to thwart Azerbaijan’s tripartite cooperation efforts.
Tehran has seized the opportunity of the Gaza war to pursue a grand, multi-pronged strategy in which Iran uses economic means to achieve its foreign policy objectives through a series of coercive actions that are widely overlooked. Iran’s multi-pronged strategy seeks to achieve multiple goals simultaneously in both the Middle East and the South Caucasus.
Iran’s strategy prioritizes isolating Israel through economic means and undermining its relations with Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Gulf Arab states. Iran’s subtle and calculated approach also aims to inflict economic damage on Azerbaijan, Israel and Turkey, which derives significant revenue from exporting oil to Israel via Turkey.
Given the global nature of the modern economy, economic power plays a key role in shaping geopolitical outcomes and foreign policy. In this case, Iran’s use of political, diplomatic and media means, as well as its regional proxy forces like the Houthis in Yemen, are worthy of analysis. Using economic means to shape geopolitical outcomes and achieve foreign policy goals is the basis of Iran’s multidimensional strategy. Iran alone does not have the necessary economic means. However, the Islamic Republic has significant geopolitical assets in the form of proxy groups and diplomatic and media resources, which it uses to disrupt or cut off global navigation and block the flow of strategic supplies to Israel.
The late Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdullahian called on Muslim-majority countries to impose an oil embargo on Israel and expel its envoys in October 2023. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called on Muslim countries to halt trade with Israel the following month, particularly of food and oil. Ayatollah Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, followed Ayatollah Khamenei’s call and called on Arab and Muslim countries to impose an oil embargo on Israel.
The call for an economic boycott of Israel by Muslim-majority countries offers a glimpse into Iran’s multi-pronged strategy. The late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also reiterated Khamenei’s call for a boycott of Israel at the Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh in November 2023. President Raisi echoed Khamenei’s call, arguing that Islamic countries must sever diplomatic ties and refuse to buy Israeli products. A few weeks after the call for an economic boycott, Khamenei had urged Islamic countries that have diplomatic ties with Israel to suspend diplomatic ties for a period of time. In January 2024, Khamenei reiterated his call for a total blockade of Israel by Islamic countries.
Public statements by Iranian leaders clearly indicate Tehran’s multi-pronged strategy to use the Gaza war to economically isolate Israel, impose an oil embargo, destroy Israel’s economic and diplomatic ties with Muslim-majority countries, and position Iran as the region’s leading geopolitical power. To implement this strategy, Iran has engaged in coercive media propaganda against many countries, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Iranian media has intensified its criticism of Turkey over its trade and economic ties with Israel and Azerbaijan over oil exports through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, which meets 40% of Israel’s crude oil needs.
Iranian media has also criticized Turkish President Erdogan for failing to cut trade ties with Israel, which was actively exploited by Islamists, including Fatih Erbakan, leader of the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP), in recent local elections. The Iran-sympathetic New Welfare Party won 6.1% of the national vote, contributing to Erdogan’s first electoral defeat in decades. Following his electoral defeat, Erdogan’s government launched economic measures against Israel and halted trade. Iranian media propaganda and aggressive narrative shaping ahead of Turkey’s elections had major consequences in creating tensions in Turkish-Israeli diplomatic and economic relations. Iran’s multi-faceted strategy of achieving goals in multiple battlefields has been successful so far in two places: Turkey and Yemen. Iran has used the Houthis to disrupt maritime shipping and establish itself as a key player capable of halting trade not only in the Persian Gulf but also in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Iran’s strategy of using economic means to achieve its objectives also includes containing and weakening Azerbaijan by making it incur heavy revenue losses. Not only does Azerbaijan fulfill around 40% of Israel’s crude oil needs, but Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy giant SOCAR, along with British Petroleum and Israel’s New Med, have been granted licenses to explore areas north of Israel’s Leviathan gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel’s strong bilateral and multifaceted relationship with Azerbaijan has long been of prime interest to the Iranian regime. The Israeli-Azerbaijani military-technical partnership helped Baku strengthen its national security and defense and recapture territory from occupying Armenian forces. The changing realities of South Caucasus politics since 2020 are a security concern for Tehran. The constant attacks by Iranian media on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline are part of Iran’s multifaceted strategy.
If the United States wants to counter these attempts, it is important to better understand Iran’s strategy. Iran has used hybrid warfare, proxy wars, media propaganda, and intimidation to pressure its neighbors to sever economic and diplomatic ties with Israel, with some success, but not in the region’s interest. Iran’s main objectives are to disrupt the Arab-Israeli normalization process under the Abraham Accords, strain Turkish-Israeli diplomatic and economic relations, undermine Azerbaijan’s independence by targeting its main source of revenue, prevent the emergence of Azerbaijan-Israeli-Turkey tripartite cooperation, and prevent further diplomatic normalization of Israel’s relations with Muslim-majority countries. It is only by understanding Iran’s attempts that the United States, Israel, and the broader region can thwart Iran’s success.
Rufat Ahmadzada is a graduate of City, University of London. His research interests are South Caucasus and Iran. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.
