The Azerbaijani–Israeli Business Forum Signals a Broader Strategic Realignment

For weeks, the governments of the Persian Gulf walked a diplomatic tightrope. Publicly and in private, they urged restraint in Washington. Envoys shuttled between capitals. Messages were passed quietly to Tehran. The aim was simple: prevent a direct American strike on the Islamic Republic and spare the region another war. Then the missiles came.

Early in the morning on February 28, the United States and Israel launched missile strikes on Iranian territory.

In 1926, delegates gathered in Baku for the First Turkological Congress and debated a question that would outlive empires and ideological blocs: could the Turkic world one day share a common alphabet? One hundred years later, in the same city, the idea has returned — not as an abstract aspiration, but as a structured project backed by presidents, parliaments and cultural institutions.

According to U.S. officials and analysts, the United States opted for restraint rather than war amid protests that swept across Iran late last year and peaked by mid-January. The Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the RAND Corporation have concluded that military action would most likely consolidate Tehran’s leadership, destabilize the region, and damage global energy markets, without delivering political change.