March 13, 2026

SHARE |

The Dynamics You Aren’t Watching: Iran’s Campaign Across Its Peripheries

(AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

On March 5, Azerbaijan announced that Iranian drones had crossed into the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an Azerbaijani exclave wedged between Armenia and Iran, injuring civilians and damaging infrastructure. Days later, Azerbaijani authorities said they had also foiled an Iranian plot to attack the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, the major export route that runs from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Türkiye’s Mediterranean coast. A day before the Nakhchivan attack, a missile that was launched from Iran was detected traveling towards Türkiye, before being intercepted by NATO air – and missile-defense assets. Had the missile hit Türkiye, it could have triggered an Article V response from NATO. Days prior, on March 2, an Iranian-made drone believed to be launched by Lebanese Hezbollah struck a British Royal Air Force base in Cyprus. On March 9, Türkiye reported that another Iranian missile was headed its way before again being intercepted by NATO defenses. Many regional experts believed that the attacks had been targeting Incirlik Air Base, the base in southern Türkiye widely believed to store U.S. B61 nuclear bombs.

While these attacks may appear scattered, they are underpinned by a multitude of ethnic and regional dynamics driving Iran's broader strategic goals— a strategy that extends well beyond the Persian Gulf and Israel. Importantly, Azerbaijan and Iran have long had a tumultuous relationship despite both being majority Shi’a states. Tehran has been deeply suspicious of Baku’s close security relationship with Israel and wary of Azerbaijani nationalism resonating among Iran’s very large Azeri population, even though Iranian Azeris have historically been more integrated into the Iranian state than some other minorities. Azerbaijan and Türkiye, on the other hand, are exceptionally close allies, often described by their leaders as “one nation, two states,” which derives from their shared Turkic identity and a strategic partnership that has steadily deepened over the last several years. In fact, Turkish backing was central to Azerbaijan’s military success against Armenia, culminating in Baku’s September 2023 recapture of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and the collapse of the separatist Armenian authorities there.

Since then, longstanding enemies, Armenia and Azerbaijan have moved toward a more formal, if still uneasy, postwar settlement. Just a year ago, in a landmark event for the two nations, they agreed on the text of a peace treaty, and in August 2025, under U.S. auspices, they signed a declaration tied to the planned land corridor linking Azerbaijan proper to Nakhchivan, officially branded the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). Iran has long opposed such a corridor because it would traverse its border while strengthening the Türkiye-Azerbaijan axis in the region. It would also reinforce an infrastructure belt connecting the South Caucasus to wider regional energy and transport networks. This is especially relevant to Iran because Azerbaijan is also one of Israel’s closest partners.  The two countries cooperate in energy, defense, and cybersecurity, among other things. According to Reuters, Azerbaijani crude delivered from the BTC pipeline accounted for around 46 percent of Israel’s oil imports in 2025.

Shifting away from the Caucasus, the Cypriot dimension is also relevant to these larger dynamics. Cyprus, located between Israel and Türkiye in the eastern Mediterranean, is itself a long-standing point of tension between Türkiye and another regional rival, Greece. The south of the island largely consists of Greek Cypriots, who govern the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus (ROC). In the north sits the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Ankara. The United Kingdom, the island’s former colonial power, still retains two sovereign military bases that it kept after Cypriot independence in 1960. The ROC is also a growing partner of Israel. The two governments, along with Greece, signed a trilateral cooperation plan for 2026, which, according to CBS, includes “military coordination and joint exercises between their respective armed forces, as well as cooperation on broader regional security challenges.”

Türkiye, which also has a tumultuous relationship with Israel—primarily over the treatment of Palestinians—viewed these developments as unacceptable. In response to the meeting between the trilateral partners, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote on X that “we will neither accept injustice nor allow our rights to be trampled.” The trilateral alignment, however, is widely seen as a response to Türkiye’s growing power as a regional actor not only in the Mediterranean and the Caucasus but also in the Middle East more broadly.

Türkiye’s growing role as a regional actor has also reshaped its relationship with Iran. Although ties between the two countries have fluctuated, they have often remained tense but manageable. They share a common concern over Kurdish militant and separatist activity along and near their borders, which has at times created limited overlap in their security interests. But the fall of the Assad regime in Syria — a major strategic setback for Iran, which lost one of its most important regional allies — further strained ties as Türkiye emerged as one of the most influential external actors in post-Assad Syria.

With these broader dynamics in mind, it is worth returning to Iran's response to the attacks themselves. Tehran claimed that each incident — the strikes on Türkiye, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus — was a false flag operation orchestrated by Israel, designed to implicate Iran and drive a wedge between it and its neighbors. These allegations, if believed by Baku or Ankara, could, in Iran’s view, weaken the Azerbaijan–Israel relationship and provide President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with domestic political cover to avoid escalation against Iran. This would allow Tehran to continue targeting U.S. and NATO-linked interests in the region while minimizing the risk of a direct rupture with Türkiye.

On March 9, after an Iranian missile was reportedly targeting Incirlik Air Base in Türkiye, Erdogan warned Iran that “one should not enter into calculations that would open deep wounds in the hearts and minds of our nation and cast a shadow over our thousand-year tradition of neighborliness and brotherhood.” Iran denied responsibility, claiming the attack was likely an Israeli false flag operation. That same day, Erdogan announced that “In order to strengthen the defense of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, [Türkiye has] deployed six F-16 fighter jets and air defense systems to the island.”

This marks a serious escalation on the island and will likely heighten tensions around the growing Cyprus-Greece-Israel partnership. This is not to suggest direct Iranian-Turkish coordination, but rather that Iran appears to have exploited the many regional dynamics already in play to advance its interests while avoiding a more serious rupture with Türkiye. Türkiye’s move into Northern Cyprus serves Ankara’s own interests by giving it added justification for reinforcing its position on the island, while also indirectly benefiting Iran by complicating Israel’s strategic environment in Cyprus. On March 12, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described the U.S. attack on Iran as “unjust and unlawful,” while also saying that Iran’s attacks on Gulf countries were equally wrong, marking a relative de-escalation.

At the same time, relations between Azerbaijan and Iran appeared to stabilize somewhat after Baku announced it had provided humanitarian assistance to Tehran. This came after serious rebukes from the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev — including full evacuation of the Azerbaijani embassy in Iran and mobilization of the armed forces — following the attacks on Nakhchivan and the attempted plot against the BTC pipeline. Baku almost certainly did not accept Iran's claim that the attacks were Israeli false flag operations. In all likelihood, none of the attacks were false flags — there was substantial evidence, including eyewitness footage in Nakhchivan, debris forensics, and statements from intelligence officials, pointing to Iranian or Iranian-proxy origin across each incident. In Azerbaijan’s case, the accusation was particularly weak. Iran has a long-documented hostility towards Nakhchivan. Additionally, it would directly harm Israeli interests to target a pipeline that accounts for nearly half of its oil supply.

Iran likely targeted Azerbaijan in an effort to damage Israeli interests and signal to its partners the risks of close alignment, as it has done with U.S. partners in the Gulf. Tehran also likely calculated that, although much of Azerbaijan’s population is highly nationalistic and militarized — an environment President Ilham Aliyev has long cultivated as part of his strategy for maintaining power — it could still de-escalate with Baku because Azerbaijan would be unlikely to pursue direct military action without Türkiye’s support, and Ankara is far more likely to act pragmatically and cautiously than to enter this kind of conflict.

As the conflict continues, however, Iran will likely continue to exploit these dynamics to open multiple fronts of conflict for its adversaries, distract potential key players with myopic crises, and destabilize the wider region by placing additional pressure on energy-rich regions — such as the Mediterranean and the Caucasus — to potentially compound the strain caused by disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz.