Why the War Against Iran May Be Halted by the End of March

The drone strike on Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave on March 5 prompted sharply different responses from the United States and Russia, revealing competing diplomatic approaches to the growing tensions between Azerbaijan and Iran and underscoring that the South Caucasus has become a new arena of geopolitical rivalry.

The specter of state collapse in the Middle East often brings to mind a single image: the descent of Syria into civil war after 2011. Cities reduced to ruins, foreign powers fighting through their proxies, and a fractured country divided among militias became the defining narrative of the most destructive modern conflict in the region.

The war engulfing Iran is rapidly transforming the strategic landscape of the South Caucasus. For Azerbaijan, the conflict unfolding to its south is not simply another episode of Middle Eastern instability. It represents a structural geopolitical shock that could reshape the country’s security environment, foreign policy orientation and regional role for years to come.

The death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in American and Israeli strikes on Tehran has plunged the country into its deepest political crisis since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, setting off a tense struggle between hard-line security institutions and more pragmatic political figures over the future of the Islamic Republic.