The Grey Cardinal’s Betrayal

When Azerbaijan’s cabinet of ministers decided in March to extend the country’s special quarantine regime until July 1, the formal explanation sounded familiar. The regulation dates back to the COVID-19 pandemic and legally allows the government to keep Azerbaijan’s land borders closed to passenger movement. Yet six years after the virus first appeared, few observers believe that epidemiology remains the decisive factor.

As the international order grows more brittle, Azerbaijan has once again used Baku not simply as a capital, but as a stage — a place where former presidents, ministers, diplomats and policy thinkers gather to talk through the cracks in the global system, even if they leave without the power to seal them.

Six days after the drone attack on Nakhchivan, the question of who was responsible for the operation remains open. Immediately after the incident, officials in Tehran suggested that Israel might be behind the attack in an attempt to drive a wedge between Azerbaijan and Iran. However, representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) effectively acknowledged the possibility that structures connected to them could have been involved in the operation.

Azerbaijan has moved to strengthen its civil defense preparedness amid growing regional security tensions, approving new rules aimed at informing the population about how to respond to the potential use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.