Eldar Mamedov
The drones that struck Azerbaijan on March 5 did more than wound four people. They shattered the illusion that Central Asia could sit out the Iran War—and exposed the limits of American influence in a region Washington thought it was winning. When allegedly Iranian UAVs hit Azerbaijan’s Nakhchevan exclave—targeting the international airport terminal, narrowly missing a nearby school—Baku’s response was swift and furious. President Ilham Aliyev called it a “terrorist act,” and vowed retaliation. Iran categorically denied it launched the strike, blaming Israel for an alleged “false flag” operation instead.
But the reaction in Central Asia was far more telling. And for American and Israeli strategists who had celebrated Kazakhstan’s entry into the Abraham Accords just months earlier, it carried an uncomfortable message. They had hoped that Kazakhstan would join in a new alliance of “moderate Muslim states” stretching from the Gulf to the Caspian, aligned with Israel and hostile to Iran. The reality has proved to be more complicated, however.
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