Baku After Tehran: What Lies Behind Azerbaijan’s Measured Message?

The escalation of the crisis around Iran is already having a noticeable impact on the global oil market, pushing up prices and increasing volatility, while for Azerbaijan higher prices mean increased export revenues and the potential expansion of transit flows from Central Asia, analysts say.

In the charged atmosphere of speculation about Iran’s political future, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the country’s last shah, has offered something rare among exiled opposition figures: a blueprint.

When President Donald J. Trump declared that Iran’s supreme leader was dead and urged the country’s security forces to “join the patriots,” he framed the moment as a historic opening — “the greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.”

On March 1, Iranian state television confirmed that the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in his Tehran residence during a coordinated U.S.–Israeli missile strike carried out under the codename “Lion’s Roar.” His death marks the most profound rupture in Iran’s political order since the 1979 revolution.