Introduction

The joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign launched against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28, 2026 — Operation Epic Fury / Sha'agat HaAri (Roar of the Lion) — has fundamentally altered the strategic landscape of the Middle East and its adjacent regions. The confirmed killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the destruction of key nuclear and military infrastructure, and the catastrophic losses inflicted upon the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command structure have placed the Islamic Republic in its deepest existential crisis since its founding in 1979. For Azerbaijan and the wider South Caucasus — sharing a direct land border with Iran, bound to it by profound demographic and historical ties, and positioned at the intersection of competing great-power interests — the consequences of these developments demand rigorous and anticipatory assessment.

This analysis applies the multi-sectoral security framework developed by Barry Buzan in People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (1991) and subsequently refined with Ole Wæver in Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003). Buzan's framework transcends a narrow military conception of security, identifying five interconnected dimensions — military, political, economic, societal, and environmental — through which threats emanate, cascade, and interact across a Regional Security Complex (RSC). The South Caucasus, in Buzan and Wæver's formulation, constitutes a security subcomplex whose dynamics are inseparable from developments in the adjacent Middle Eastern RSC. The present crisis validates this theoretical proposition with striking immediacy.

The situation in Iran remains highly fluid. Rather than project a single linear trajectory, this analysis examines three plausible scenarios for Iran's post-strike evolution and assesses their differential implications for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus across all five Buzanian security dimensions.

Scenario One envisions a weakened but surviving state in which the Islamic Republic's institutional architecture endures in some recognizable form. Within this scenario, two sub-variants are considered. In the first, hardline elements consolidate control — figures such as Mojtaba Khamenei, the late Supreme Leader's son and IRGC-connected power broker (reported to have survived the February 28 strikes); Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, the Chief Justice now serving on the provisional Leadership Council; Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Parliament and former IRGC general; Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, Guardian Council member and interim council appointee; and Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council. In the second and, this analysis argues, more probable sub-variant, reformist factions — including figures such as Mohammad Khatami, the former president and father of the reformist movement; Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the 2009 Green Movement leader long held under house arrest; Mehdi Karroubi, fellow Green Movement leader and former Speaker of Parliament; and Mostafa Tajzadeh, prominent reformist activist and political prisoner — or moderate-pragmatist factions gain the ascendancy. Key figures in this latter grouping include President Masoud Pezeshkian, the sitting president now serving on the provisional Leadership Council; Hassan Rouhani, the former president who oversaw the 2015 nuclear agreement; Ali Larijani, the influential former Speaker of Parliament and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who was personally entrusted by the late Khamenei with running the country in the event of his assassination, and whose position as Iran's preeminent security and policy figure has been further consolidated by the reported killing of his rival Ali Shamkhani in the February 28 strikes; and Hassan Khomeini, the founder's grandson and potential unifying successor figure.

Scenario Two envisions an orderly transition to a Pahlavi-led or Pahlavi-aligned government, backed by Western powers and pursuing a nationalist-modernizing agenda.

Scenario Three envisions state collapse and protracted fragmentation — the "failed state" trajectory reminiscent of post-2003 Iraq or post-2011 Libya, in which central authority disintegrates and is replaced by competing warlords, ethnic militias, and radical non-state actors.

A preliminary assessment of relative probabilities is warranted. This analysis argues that Scenario One — particularly the sub-variant in which moderate-pragmatist elements prone to gradual reform assume effective leadership — carries the highest probability of the three.

Iran, unlike Syria or Libya, is not a one-man regime but possesses a sophisticated, multi-layered political system with institutional mechanisms for succession, power-sharing, and factional negotiation.

The activation of Article 111 of the Constitution and the rapid formation of a provisional Leadership Council within hours of Khamenei's death attest to this institutional resilience. The hardliner sub-variant, while not impossible, is significantly diminished by the catastrophic command losses the IRGC has sustained and by the regime's pre-existing legitimacy crisis, rooted in the January 2026 protests and mass killings.

Scenario Three — outright state collapse — represents the most dangerous outcome but carries a low probability precisely because of Iran's institutional depth, civilizational continuity, 98 percent literacy rate, and the presence of a functioning, if degraded, bureaucratic state. Iran is not analogous to the personalist autocracies whose removal produced immediate fragmentation.

Scenario Two — a Pahlavi-led restoration — presents a distinct set of dangers. Reza Pahlavi's open endorsement of the U.S.–Israeli military campaign is likely to diminish rather than enhance his domestic legitimacy, as he would be perceived by much of the Iranian public as a figure installed by foreign powers — a parallel to his father's dependence on American and British support. Such a government, lacking organic domestic legitimacy, would be more likely to invite sustained resistance from former regime factions and from the broader populace than to achieve stable governance. Each scenario is examined in detail below.

Scenario One: The Weakened but Surviving State

Regime Continuity in Diminished Form, or Reformist-Moderate Transition Within the System

This scenario assumes that the Islamic Republic's institutional architecture survives the current military campaign in some recognizable form — whether through the consolidation of power by surviving hardliners, a military takeover that preserves state cohesion, or the emergence of reformist and moderate factions who leverage the crisis to marginalize hardliners and pursue engagement with the West.

The precedent of Bashar al-Assad's Syria between 2012 and 2024 — a state hollowed out by conflict and sanctions yet retaining nominal sovereignty and institutional continuity — illustrates the degraded end of this spectrum. A more optimistic variant would see pragmatic figures, perhaps from the reformist establishment or technocratic elements within the current system, assuming leadership and seeking a negotiated accommodation with Washington and its allies in exchange for security guarantees and sanctions relief.

Military Security

Under this scenario, the refugee threat to Azerbaijan, while present, remains manageable. A functioning — if weakened — central government retains sufficient border control and internal administration to prevent mass uncontrolled displacement. However, localized displacement from heavily bombarded areas in Iran's northwestern provinces, home to millions of ethnic Azerbaijanis, could still generate pressure on Azerbaijan's southern border. The Republic of Azerbaijan has demonstrated consistent capacity for effective border management and crisis response, but prudent contingency planning for a potential influx of displaced persons remains warranted.

The radicalization threat under this scenario is moderate but not negligible. A weakened regime in which hardliners retain the upper hand might struggle to contain the emotions of its rank and file and to govern effectively across the country's vast territory, allowing the emergence of semi-autonomous regional power centres with feudal characteristics. Rogue elements within the IRGC, angered by the loss of political and socio-economic power and operating with diminished oversight from a distracted and depleted central command, could pursue reckless actions driven by emotion and ideological fervour rather than strategic calculation. While the probability of direct attacks on South Caucasian infrastructure — including oil and gas facilities or the Zangezur Corridor (the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP) — remains low even under degraded state conditions, the severity of potential consequences warrants vigilance.

The drone attack on Nakhichevan International Airport on March 5, 2026 — in which at least four Iranian drones crossed into Azerbaijani territory, with one striking the airport's passenger terminal and another landing near a school in the village of Shakarabad in Babak District, injuring four civilians — has transformed the radicalization and spillover threat from a theoretical contingency into an operational reality, dramatically validating the concerns outlined in this analysis.
 

The drones, identified by observers as Iranian-manufactured Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with MD550 engines, struck Azerbaijani sovereign territory just ten kilometers from the Iranian border. President Aliyev, convening an emergency session of the Security Council, characterized the attack as "an unprovoked act of terror and aggression" and instructed the Armed Forces to "prepare and implement appropriate retaliatory measures." Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry summoned Iranian Ambassador Mojtaba Demirchilou, demanded a formal explanation, and reserved Azerbaijan's right to take "appropriate response measures."

Iran, through Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, denied responsibility — with Araghchi suggesting that Israel could be behind the strike in an effort to undermine Iranian-Azerbaijani relations. These denials, however, should be approached with considerable skepticism. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not merely one institution among many within the Iranian state — it is the de facto ruling power in a system widely characterized by analysts as a military theocracy. The IRGC controls an estimated 20–40 percent of Iran's economy, commands its most capable military forces, operates its intelligence and covert-action networks, and exercises decisive influence over the Supreme Leader's office and the security apparatus. As former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif acknowledged in a leaked audio recording in 2021, "In the Islamic Republic, the battlefield rules" — a candid admission that the IRGC consistently subordinated, circumvented, and at times directly sabotaged the diplomatic objectives of Iran's elected government. Zarif recounted that he was only informed of the IRGC's January 2020 missile strike on an Iraqi military base two hours after it occurred, and that when the IRGC subsequently shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 on board, commanders pressed him merely to deny Iranian culpability. Given the IRGC's position as the dominant power center within the Iranian state — and its demonstrated pattern of conducting military operations without the knowledge or consent of the civilian government — the Nakhichevan strike, whether known or not by Iran's diplomatic leadership, must be assessed as an act of Iranian state aggression. The IRGC is the Iranian state in all but name; its actions are, by definition, state actions.

Moreover, since Azerbaijan's independence in 1991, Tehran has exhibited a sustained pattern of adversarial conduct toward Baku — including support for Armenia during both Karabakh Wars, the July 2001 incident in which an Iranian warship and military aircraft forced BP-operated exploration vessels out of Azerbaijan's Araz-Sharg-Alov oil field in the Caspian Sea, threatening to use force and halting a $9–10 billion energy project and the January 2023 attack on Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran, which President Aliyev characterized as "terror organized on a governmental level." Against this three-decade pattern, the March 5 Nakhichevan strike appears not as an aberration but as the latest and most brazen manifestation of a deeply entrenched posture of hostility.

The timing and targeting of the attack carry particular analytical significance. The strike occurred just one day after President Aliyev had visited the Iranian embassy in Baku to offer personal condolences over the killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei — a gesture of notable diplomatic weight, as Aliyev himself observed that "no other head of state has visited any Iranian embassy" for this purpose. That Tehran — whether through deliberate command decision, rogue IRGC elements, or catastrophic operational failure in targeting — responded to this gesture by striking Azerbaijani civilian infrastructure underscores the very dynamic this analysis identified: a weakened regime, struggling to maintain command coherence over its armed forces and proxy networks under the extreme duress of ongoing U.S.–Israeli bombardment, may prove incapable of exercising the restraint and strategic discipline that functional state-to-state relations require, even when the political leadership signals a desire for de-escalation.

The Nakhichevan attack also appears to form part of a broader Iranian strategy of horizontal escalation — striking neighboring states and regional infrastructure to impose costs not merely on the United States and Israel but on the wider international community, thereby generating pressure on Washington to cease military operations. Iran has, in the days since the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, launched drone and missile attacks against targets in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and — in a particularly provocative incident — fired a ballistic missile that traversed Turkish airspace before being intercepted by NATO air defense systems over the eastern Mediterranean. The attack on Nakhichevan International Airport must be understood within this pattern of deliberate horizontal escalation.

The probable strategic calculus behind the Nakhichevan strike, however, extends beyond simple retaliation or signaling displeasure with Azerbaijan's Western partnerships. By targeting civilian aviation infrastructure in the South Caucasus, Iran may be calculating that it can disrupt one of the last remaining viable air corridors between Europe and Asia. With Russian airspace closed to Western carriers since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and with Iranian, Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Qatari, and Emirati airspace now fully or partially closed due to the ongoing conflict, the Caucasus corridor — a narrow band of airspace spanning Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, as little as 100 miles wide at its narrowest point between Russian and Iranian airspace — has become the critical bottleneck for intercontinental aviation. According to CANSO (the Civil Aviation Air Navigation Service Organization), Azerbaijani airspace was already handling 110 additional flights per day when Iran temporarily closed its airspace in June 2025. The current crisis has vastly amplified this dependency, with Flightradar24 data showing flights being funneled into this corridor from carriers across Europe and Asia with no alternative routing option. By demonstrating a willingness and capability to strike aviation infrastructure within this corridor — and by prompting Azerbaijan to close its southern airspace for twelve hours and shutter its border crossings with Iran for all cargo trucks, including transit shipments that constitute one of the shortest land routes connecting Iran to Russia — Tehran may be calculating that the threat of further disruption to the Caucasus air and land corridor will generate sufficient international pressure, particularly from European and Asian governments and commercial aviation interests, to compel the United States to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. In essence, the attack on Nakhichevan airport may represent an attempt to weaponize global connectivity — holding intercontinental air travel between Europe and Asia hostage as leverage against the Western coalition. This represents a qualitative escalation in the threat profile, as it extends the conflict's impact far beyond the immediate theatre of operations and directly implicates the economic and transport interests of states with no involvement in the U.S.–Israeli campaign against Iran.

Azerbaijan's robust security apparatus and well-developed cooperation with strategic partners — particularly Türkiye, which issued a strong condemnation of the Nakhichevan attack and reaffirmed that it "will continue to stand by Azerbaijan in the future, as it has always done," as well as the United States, the European Union, and Israel — provide a strong foundation for addressing such contingencies. However, the March 5 attack demonstrates that the threat is no longer hypothetical, and that the military-security dimension of this scenario demands not merely vigilance but active defensive posture and accelerated coordination with allied partners on integrated air defense, intelligence sharing, and contingency response

Political Security

The political implications of this scenario bifurcate depending on whether the surviving state retains its hardline character or transitions toward moderation and reform.

A surviving hardline regime, weakened and humiliated, could adopt an increasingly revanchist posture toward its neighbours as a means of compensating for domestic fragility — redirecting public anger outward. Historically, the Islamic Republic has viewed the South Caucasus as a sphere of influence and has been particularly sensitive to developments regarding the Azerbaijani ethnic question, the Zangezur Corridor, and Azerbaijan's deepening partnerships with Israel and the West. A cornered regime might intensify efforts to level accusations of separatist agitation against the Republic of Azerbaijan and to cast Baku's cooperation with Western countries and Israel in a hostile light — charges Tehran has intermittently deployed in the past.

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan had been on a notably improving trajectory through 2025. This trajectory included the execution of the individual responsible for the attack on the Azerbaijani embassy; the Araz-2025 joint bilateral military drills; and, most significantly, President Pezeshkian's visit to Baku and to Khankendi — a visit that implied Iranian recognition of Karabakh as an integral part of Azerbaijan. This rapprochement was particularly meaningful given the strains that had emerged during and after the Second Karabakh War, when Azerbaijan rightly noted the inconsistency of Iran's position: Tehran had not objected to Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijani territories for nearly three decades, yet had responded to Azerbaijan's liberation of those territories by conducting military drills along the bilateral border. The hard-won improvements in the relationship could deteriorate sharply under a wounded hardline successor regime. Regardless of which sub-variant materializes, the March 5 Nakhichevan attack has already inflicted significant damage on the bilateral relationship. The sharp public criticism by President Aliyev — demanding accountability, an official apology, and a criminal investigation — reflects a qualitative shift in Baku's posture toward Tehran. If Tehran does not take meaningful steps to remedy its actions against Azerbaijan, the bilateral relationship faces sharp and irrevocable deterioration.

A reformist-moderate transition, conversely, could open new diplomatic space. A government eager to reintegrate into the international community would have incentives to pursue cooperative relations with its neighbors, including Azerbaijan. Such a government might prove more amenable to accommodating the Zangezur Corridor — a posture already signaled by President Pezeshkian — easing border restrictions, and pursuing economic cooperation, all of which would serve Azerbaijan's national interests. However, even reformist Iranian governments have historically maintained a baseline assertion of Iranian influence over the South Caucasus, which means that Baku can be expected to approach any new interlocutor with calibrated pragmatism rather than premature optimism.

Economic Security

A weakened but surviving Iranian state, laboring under intensified sanctions and war damage, would offer limited near-term economic opportunity to the South Caucasus. Energy price volatility driven by the disruption of Iranian exports would generate increased revenues for Azerbaijan as a hydrocarbon exporter, but this windfall is double-edged. Rising energy prices inflate the cost of imported goods — particularly foodstuffs, where energy inputs are embedded throughout the agricultural value chain from fertilizer production to transportation. Azerbaijan, which imports a significant share of its food supply, would face upward pressure on consumer prices, with cascading effects on household purchasing power.

Trade with Iran itself would further contract under sanctions pressure; moreover, in a weakened central state, the commercial environment would become less predictable and more costly for businesses as trading rules, customs enforcement, and contract security erode. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), in which both Azerbaijan and Iran hold strategic stakes, would operate at reduced capacity. Investor confidence in the broader South Caucasus would be dampened by the proximity of ongoing instability, though not to the catastrophic degree that outright collapse would produce. At the same time, the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor would gain further geopolitical salience in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, reinforcing Azerbaijan's position as an indispensable transit hub.

Should reformist elements achieve a negotiated accommodation with the West, the medium-term economic outlook brightens considerably. The removal of Western sanctions on a normalized Iran would unlock one of the world's largest untapped markets — nearly 90 million consumers with diversified industrial capacity and vast energy reserves. Expanded bilateral trade, revitalization of the INSTC, increased transit revenues, and new opportunities for cross-border investment would all serve Azerbaijan's economic interests. Azerbaijan, with its strategic geographic position, existing infrastructure, and established commercial relationships, would be exceptionally well positioned to benefit from such a transformation. Furthermore, a normalized Iranian route would provide Azerbaijan with a valuable alternative to its current dependence on Georgia — and, prospectively, Armenia — for westward connectivity, thereby diversifying transit options to ensure secure and uninterrupted flows and reducing vulnerability to disruption in any single corridor.

Social Security

Under a weakened-state scenario, the narcotics trafficking threat to the South Caucasus would intensify. The precedent of Assad-era Syria is directly relevant: the Assad regime, progressively starved of legitimate revenue by sanctions and civil war, transformed into what analysts characterized as a "narco-state," with regime-linked networks industrializing the production and trafficking of Captagon to generate hard currency. That trade inflicted significant damage on the health and social fabric of populations across Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gulf states. A similarly squeezed Iranian state — or, more precisely, IRGC-affiliated economic networks that already control an estimated 20–40 percent of Iran's economy — could escalate narcotics production and trafficking as a revenue survival mechanism, leveraging existing smuggling routes through the Caucasus. The consequent increase in narcotics availability would disproportionately affect younger demographics in the South Caucasus, exacerbating addiction, straining healthcare infrastructure, and eroding social cohesion — a societal-security threat in Buzan's precise formulation.

A reformist transition that successfully reintegrates Iran into the international economy would reduce the structural incentives for state-linked narcotics trafficking. However, the deeply embedded grey-economy networks built up over decades of sanctions would not disappear overnight. There are widespread allegations, supported by considerable evidence, that the Iranian regime adapted to sanctions by cultivating illicit trade and drug trafficking networks. As former President Rouhani himself warned, sanctions have diminished Iran's capacity to control its own borders effectively. There are further allegations that, despite the regime's brutal domestic enforcement posture, clandestine networks and Iranian proxy organizations have engaged in the trafficking of Captagon and other synthetic narcotics to generate hard currency — a practice that any successor government would inherit and need years to dismantle.

Environmental Security

Iran's environmental crisis — exemplified by the near-total desiccation of Lake Urmia, which has lost more than 98 percent of its water volume, exposing a 13-billion-ton salt bed that generates toxic dust storms across the Azerbaijani-majority provinces — would persist and likely deepen under any weakened-state scenario. War damage, the diversion of resources from environmental remediation, and the continued absence of effective regulatory governance would accelerate ecological degradation. For Azerbaijan, the transboundary implications are direct: prevailing wind patterns carry toxic particulate matter from the desiccated Urmia basin across the Aras River into Azerbaijani territory, affecting air quality, agricultural productivity, and public health in border communities. A moderate or reformist transition with substantive international engagement could, over time, attract the technical and financial resources necessary to address these challenges, but the environmental damage already inflicted will require decades of sustained remediation.

Scenario Two: Orderly Transition to a Pahlavi-Led Government

Monarchist Restoration Under Western Patronage

This scenario envisions the collapse of the Islamic Republic's governing apparatus followed by a managed transition in which Reza Pahlavi — the exiled son of Mohammad Reza Shah — assumes a leadership role, either as a constitutional monarch or as head of a transitional authority, with substantial Western backing. Pahlavi has positioned himself through vehicles such as the Iran Prosperity Project and the National Unity Fund for a Democratic Iran (NUFDI) as the figurehead of a post-Islamic Republic political order. His public messaging emphasizes secularism, democracy, and territorial integrity. The transition would be supported by the United States, which has explicitly articulated regime change as a campaign objective, and possibly facilitated by a National Reconciliation Council of the type advocated by various policy analysts.

It must be noted at the outset that the probability of this scenario materializing in its idealized form may be considerably lower than the prevailing media narrative suggests. The Iranian opposition in exile is deeply fragmented, and historical precedent — most notably the cautionary tale of Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq — demonstrates the difficulty of translating external backing and diaspora enthusiasm into domestic legitimacy and operational governance. Monarchist sentiment polls as high as 31 percent among some Iranian samples, but such figures are methodologically unreliable and largely reflect nostalgia for pre-revolutionary stability rather than a considered political mandate. Moreover, Pahlavi's open endorsement of the U.S.–Israeli bombing campaign is likely to diminish his domestic standing further, as a significant portion of the Iranian public — including many who oppose the Islamic Republic — would view a Pahlavi government as a regime installed by the United States and Israel, a perception that would fundamentally compromise its legitimacy. The gap between symbolic support and the organizational capacity required to administer a country of 90 million in crisis conditions is vast. Nonetheless, the scenario merits careful analysis because even its partial realization would reshape the regional security environment.

Military Security

An orderly Pahlavi-led transition, if successfully executed, would represent the most benign military-security outcome for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus in the near term. A functioning transitional government, backed by Western security guarantees and possibly international peacekeeping arrangements, would retain or reconstitute sufficient state capacity to manage borders, prevent mass uncontrolled displacement, and absorb the IRGC's residual elements through amnesty and integration programmes. The refugee threat would be substantially reduced compared to the collapse scenario, though some localized displacement from war-affected areas would continue.

The radicalization threat, however, would not be eliminated. A Pahlavi-led transition would face determined opposition from IRGC loyalists, Basij hardliners, and elements of the clerical establishment with nothing to lose. History demonstrates that regime transitions generate irreconcilable elements — and an organization as large, wealthy, and militarily experienced as the IRGC would not dissolve quietly. Remnant factions, particularly those excluded from amnesty frameworks or facing accountability for the January 2026 massacres and earlier episodes of mass repression, could reconstitute as insurgent or terrorist formations. The threat of rogue attacks on South Caucasian infrastructure, while still low in probability, would persist during the transition period as disaffected elements seek to sow chaos, undermine the new order, and demonstrate opposition to American influence in the region. Azerbaijan's security establishment would need to maintain heightened vigilance during this phase.

Political Security

It is in the political dimension that Scenario Two presents the most complex and potentially problematic implications for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus.

The Pahlavi dynasty carries the historical legacy of centralizing Aryan-Persian nationalism — an ideology that, under Reza Shah (r. 1925–1941) and Mohammad Reza Shah (r. 1941–1979), pursued the systematic suppression of non-Persian linguistic and cultural identities. Azerbaijani language education was banned, Turkic cultural expression was marginalized, and an aggressive programme of Persian cultural homogenization was implemented. The Pahlavi state's ideological foundation rested on a narrative of pre-Islamic Persian civilizational continuity and Aryan racial identity that explicitly subordinated the country's Turkic, Kurdish, Arab, and Baluch populations. This historical memory remains vivid among both Iranian Azerbaijanis and the populace of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

While Reza Pahlavi has publicly articulated commitments to secularism, democracy, and the territorial integrity of a multi-ethnic Iran, several indicators raise concerns about the depth of these commitments and their implications for Azerbaijani interests.

First, the institutional credibility of Pahlavi's transition apparatus invites scrutiny. The inclusion of his daughter, Noor Pahlavi, as an advisor on his political roadmap — despite her absence of substantive political or governance experience — suggests a dynastic rather than meritocratic orientation. A transition architecture built around familial loyalty rather than competence raises questions about whether the pluralist and minority-rights protections that Iran's diverse population requires would materialize in practice or remain rhetorical commitments.

Second, Pahlavi's support base in the diaspora is disproportionately drawn from constituencies that identify with Persian nationalist sentiments. A government accountable to this constituency might prove less receptive to the demands of ethnic minorities for linguistic rights, cultural autonomy, and equitable political representation than its public rhetoric suggests. The Azerbaijani community in Iran — numbering 20–25 million and constituting the country's largest ethnic minority — would be the first to test the sincerity of any pluralist commitments.

Third, a Pahlavi-led Iran, emboldened by Western patronage and freed from the international isolation that constrained the Islamic Republic, might seek to reassert Iranian great-power status in its near abroad. The Pahlavis were known as ardent Iranian nationalists with expansive conceptions of Iran's rightful sphere of influence. A restored monarchist or neo-monarchist government, enjoying favorable relations with Washington and possessing a more internationally presentable political profile than the theocracy it replaced, could prove a more sophisticated — and therefore more challenging — interlocutor for Azerbaijan on issues ranging from the conditions of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran to the Zangezur Corridor to energy transit arrangements, particularly insofar as these arrangements create competitive alternatives to Iran's own corridor routes and energy transit infrastructure. It bears noting in this context that the current Islamic Republic, for all its antagonisms, was not entirely exclusionary toward its Azerbaijani population: the sitting president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is of Azerbaijani origin, and the late Supreme Leader Khamenei himself had ethnic Azerbaijani roots. While the Republic of Azerbaijan does not formally raise the issue of ethnic Azerbaijanis' status with the current Iranian government, the Islamic Republic's approach — however imperfect — reflected a certain pragmatic accommodation. A Pahlavi-aligned government's approach to the same question remains an unknown variable, and the Azerbaijani leadership would have legitimate grounds to approach such a development with measured caution, recognizing that a more capable and internationally connected Iranian government could exert influence over the South Caucasus in ways that the isolated Islamic Republic could not.

These concerns do not imply that a Pahlavi-led transition would necessarily be hostile to Azerbaijani interests. A genuinely democratic and pluralist Iran would represent a transformative opportunity for the entire region. The point, rather, is that the gap between stated intentions and historical patterns must be monitored with clear-eyed pragmatism, and that Azerbaijan's diplomatic engagement with any successor Iranian government can be expected to be calibrated to concrete actions on minority rights and regional cooperation rather than rhetorical assurances.

Economic Security

An orderly Pahlavi-led transition, particularly one that achieves rapid Western recognition and sanctions removal, would on paper offer the most favourable economic scenario for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus. The unlocking of the Iranian market — nearly 90 million consumers, vast hydrocarbon reserves, diversified industrial capacity — would generate transformative opportunities for expanded trade, transit revenue, and cross-border investment. The INSTC and the Middle Corridor infrastructure would gain a critical new node. Azerbaijan's position as a connectivity hub between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia would be significantly enhanced.

However, the transition period itself would be characterized by economic turbulence. Energy markets would remain volatile until Iranian production capacity is restored. The reconstruction of Iran's war-damaged infrastructure would absorb vast capital resources, potentially competing with South Caucasian investment priorities for international attention and funding. Furthermore, a normalized Iran re-entering global energy markets as a major exporter could, over the longer term, exert downward pressure on hydrocarbon prices — a development that, while beneficial for the global economy, would reduce Azerbaijan's energy windfall. A normalized Iran would also present competitive challenges by offering alternative transit routes; at the same time, the use of Iranian territory — currently under construction — for the Zangezur Corridor would provide Azerbaijan with diversified routing alternatives beyond its dependence on Georgia and, prospectively, the Armenian Zangezur route, thereby reducing uncertainty and increasing overall corridor capacity.

Social Security

An orderly transition would, over the medium term, reduce the structural incentives for state-linked narcotics trafficking by reintegrating Iran into the legitimate international economy. However, the transition period itself would be vulnerable to exploitation by criminal networks. As noted above, the IRGC's deeply embedded grey economy — including narcotics-linked operations cultivated over decades of sanctions adaptation, with proxy networks reportedly trafficking Captagon and other synthetic drugs to generate hard currency — would take years to fully dismantle even under the most favourable conditions. Azerbaijan's counter-narcotics posture would need to remain enhanced throughout the transition phase.

Environmental Security

A Pahlavi-led government with Western backing and international legitimacy would be better positioned than any other scenario to attract the technical assistance and capital investment necessary to address Iran's environmental catastrophe. Lake Urmia's restoration, water resource management, and desertification mitigation would benefit from international engagement and expertise. For Azerbaijan, this represents the most promising pathway toward addressing the transboundary environmental threats — toxic dust, water contamination, ecological degradation — that emanate from Iran's northwestern provinces. However, even under optimal conditions, the environmental damage accumulated over decades would require sustained, long-term remediation.

Scenario Three: State Collapse and Protracted Fragmentation

The Failed-State Trajectory

This scenario envisions the complete disintegration of Iran's central governing authority, producing a power vacuum filled by competing warlords, ethnic militias, IRGC remnants operating as autonomous fiefdoms, and radical non-state actors. The precedents are Iraq after 2003, Libya after 2011, and Syria after 2011 — societies where the removal of a centralized authoritarian regime led not to democratic transition but to protracted civil conflict, territorial fragmentation, and the emergence of extremist organizations. Given Iran's population of nearly 90 million, its ethnic diversity (Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Baluch, Turkmen, and others), and the IRGC's deeply embedded economic and military infrastructure, a collapse scenario in Iran would dwarf its predecessors in scale and complexity. This is, for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus, the worst-case trajectory.

Military Security

State collapse in Iran would produce the gravest military-security threats to Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus across multiple vectors.

The refugee crisis under this scenario would be of a magnitude for which the region has no precedent. With central authority dissolved, border control mechanisms non-functional, and millions of civilians fleeing violence, hunger, and the breakdown of essential services, Azerbaijan's southern border would come under sustained pressure that physical barriers alone could not contain. Iran's northern provinces — home to the majority of the country's Azerbaijani population — would be among the most directly affected areas, given their proximity to the war's epicentre and the likelihood of ethnic mobilization and counter-mobilization. The humanitarian burden on Azerbaijan, Türkiye, and the wider region would be immense, requiring coordinated international response and significant resource mobilization.

The radicalization and terrorism threat under collapse conditions would be qualitatively different from — and far more severe than — the other two scenarios. The dissolution of the IRGC as a unified command structure would not eliminate its operational capacity; it would disperse it. Former IRGC commanders — trained in asymmetric warfare, intelligence operations, organizational management, and governance — would emerge as leaders of successor formations, some ideologically motivated, others purely mercenary. The precedent of post-Ba'athist Iraq is directly relevant: the former military and intelligence professionals who formed the organizational backbone of the Islamic State were not radicalized amateurs but experienced administrators and warriors who brought institutional competence to a terrorist enterprise. A similar dynamic involving IRGC remnants would produce non-state actors of exceptional capability and lethality.

These formations, operating in the chaos of a collapsed state, would pose direct threats to South Caucasian security. Unlike a weakened but functioning state, which retains some capacity for self-restraint and deterrence, a fragmented landscape of competing armed groups operates without strategic calculus. Rogue elements — driven by ideological fanaticism, personal vengeance, or opportunistic calculation — might target major infrastructure within the South Caucasus, including Azerbaijan's oil and gas production and export facilities, the Zangezur Corridor, or foreign diplomatic missions. Some elements might perceive Azerbaijan's cooperation with Western partners as complicity in the military campaign against Iran; although Azerbaijan has stated clearly that it does not permit its airspace to be used against Iran, conspiracy theories to this effect circulate among certain Iranian factions and could provide the emotional pretext for attacks by irrational actors. The consequences of such threats — the uncertainty and insecurity they generate — would themselves be costly, even in the absence of a successful strike. Azerbaijan's security establishment, in close coordination with Türkiye and other partners, would need to operate at a heightened posture for an extended period. The March 5 Nakhichevan attack provides a foretaste of the threat dynamics that would intensify exponentially under Scenario Three. If a weakened but nominally functioning Iranian state has already proven reckless to conduct drone strikes on the civilian airport of a neighboring country, the threat environment under conditions of complete state collapse, in which IRGC remnants operate as autonomous armed formations with access to vast arsenals of precision-guided munitions and unmanned aerial vehicles, would be qualitatively more severe. Like the Caucasus air corridor, already demonstrated to be vulnerable, the region would face persistent threat from multiple non-state actors possessing Shahed-type drones and other Iranian-manufactured weapons systems, with no central authority capable of being held diplomatically accountable or deterred through conventional state-to-state mechanisms.

Political Security

State collapse would generate the most destabilizing political-security dynamics for the South Caucasus. The fragmentation of Iran along ethnic lines — a prospect that analysts have long debated but that would become acute in the absence of central authority — would directly implicate Azerbaijan. The mobilization of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran's northern provinces, whether toward autonomy, self-defense, or irredentist objectives, would create pressures that Baku would find exceptionally difficult to manage. The Republic of Azerbaijan's consistent position of respect for Iran's sovereignty and territorial integrity would come under strain — both from domestic public sentiment expressing solidarity with co-ethnics under threat and from external actors seeking to draw Baku into the vacuum.

Economic Security

The economic consequences of Iranian state collapse for the South Caucasus would be the most severe of any scenario. Energy prices would spike dramatically as one of the world's major oil producers descends into chaos, with additional risk multiplied by potential disruption to the Strait of Hormuz — through which approximately  million barrels per day transit, representing roughly 31 percent of global seaborne crude. For Azerbaijan, the initial revenue windfall from elevated energy prices would be overwhelmed by the cascading costs: soaring import prices for foodstuffs and consumer goods, the collapse of cross-border trade with Iran, and a devastating impact on investor confidence throughout the region.

The Zangezur Corridor and broader Middle Corridor infrastructure projects — linchpins of Azerbaijan's strategic vision as a Eurasian connectivity hub — would face severe setbacks if the security situation spirals beyond control. International investors and global logistics operators evaluate risk on a regional basis; a failed state on the South Caucasus's southern border would fundamentally alter the risk calculus. The 49-year U.S.-majority-owned development concession for the TRIPP corridor, while backed by significant American diplomatic capital, would face financing complications — including higher capital costs and private-sector reluctance — as well as timeline delays. The economic diversification agenda that Azerbaijan has pursued would confront its most challenging external environment. In a more favourable variant of this scenario, it is possible that instability in Iran could redirect virtually all regional cargo and air traffic through the Middle Corridor via Azerbaijan, thereby elevating its geo-economic importance and transit revenues. However, for this potential to be realized, regional stakeholders and external powers with vested interests would need to invest substantially in the security architecture of the corridor to ensure uninterrupted flows.

Social Security

Scenario Three represents the gravest societal-security threat. In a collapsed state, drug trafficking would cease to be a state-tolerated grey-economy activity and would become a primary economic driver for warlords and armed factions. The parallel with post-2003 Iraq and post-2011 Libya is stark: in the absence of governance, narcotics production and trafficking expand exponentially as competing power centres seek revenue streams. The Caucasian corridor — running through Azerbaijan and Georgia toward Turkey and Europe — would emerge as a major trafficking artery, with devastating consequences for public health and social cohesion. The disproportionate impact on young people — through addiction, drug-related crime, and the erosion of social fabric — would constitute a long-term societal-security challenge requiring sustained investment in law enforcement, border security, healthcare, and prevention.

Environmental Security

State collapse would transform Iran's already critical environmental situation into an unmitigated catastrophe with severe transboundary implications. The complete dissolution of environmental governance and regulatory capacity would remove all remaining constraints on ecologically destructive practices. Lake Urmia's desiccated salt basin would receive no remediation effort whatsoever, intensifying the toxic dust storms that already drift across the Aras River into Azerbaijani territory. The destruction of industrial and military infrastructure during the conflict and its chaotic aftermath would contaminate soil, water, and air across wide areas — effects that do not respect national borders. Environmental degradation itself — water scarcity, agricultural collapse, desertification — would become a primary driver of displacement, adding an environmental-migration dimension to the already catastrophic refugee flows. For Azerbaijan's border communities, the public-health and agricultural consequences of an environmentally collapsed northern Iran would be direct and sustained.

Comparative Assessment and Conclusion

The three scenarios outlined above present markedly different risk profiles for Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus across Buzan's five security dimensions. The following comparative logic emerges.

Scenario One — the weakened but surviving state, particularly in its reformist-moderate variant — presents the most manageable near-term risk profile and the most promising medium-term opportunity horizon. A functioning Iranian state, even a diminished one, retains the capacity for self-restraint, border management, and diplomatic engagement. Should reformist elements achieve a negotiated accommodation with the West, the resulting sanctions relief and market opening could generate transformative economic benefits for the entire South Caucasus. The risks — narcotics trafficking as a revenue survival mechanism, rogue provocations by disaffected hardliners, and the persistence of transboundary environmental degradation — are significant but containable within existing institutional frameworks. The March 5 Nakhichevan drone attack, however, demonstrates that spillover threats under Scenario One have already materialized, and that the boundary between the scenarios outlined in this analysis may prove more permeable than initially expected. This analysis assesses the sub-variants of Scenario One as the most probable outcome if the war continues for an extended period.

Scenario Two — an orderly Pahlavi-led transition — appears on paper to offer favorable long-term economic and environmental prospects, given the likelihood of comprehensive Western sanctions removal, international investment in reconstruction, and technical cooperation on environmental remediation. However, it introduces the most complex and potentially problematic political-security dynamics for Azerbaijan, rooted in the Pahlavi dynasty's historical legacy of centralizing Persian nationalism and its uncertain implications for the rights and status of Iran's Azerbaijani population. The credibility of Pahlavi's pluralist commitments — tested against the dynastic character of his transition apparatus and the nationalist orientation of his core constituency — will be a critical variable for Azerbaijan's strategic calculations. The Azerbaijani leadership would have sound reasons to monitor this scenario with particular attentiveness, recognizing that a more capable and internationally connected Iranian government, emboldened by Western patronage, could prove a more formidable — if also potentially more constructive — interlocutor than the isolated theocracy it replaced. Critically, Pahlavi's legitimacy within Iran would be diminished from the outset by the widespread perception that he was installed by the United States and Israel — a mirror of his father's dependency on foreign backing. Furthermore, the vast network of IRGC security establishment personnel and other hardline constituencies, deprived of power and the economic benefits that accompanied it, would constitute a persistent source of instability, capable of sustaining long-term resistance, urban insurgency, and popular unrest within Iran.

Scenario Three — state collapse and protracted fragmentation — represents the worst-case outcome across every dimension of the Buzanian framework. Massive refugee flows, the emergence of highly capable radical non-state actors from IRGC remnants, potential attacks on critical South Caucasian infrastructure, economic disruption, exponential growth in narcotics trafficking, and unmitigated environmental catastrophe would combine to produce a security environment of unprecedented complexity and danger. This scenario demands the most intensive contingency planning and the deepest coordination with allied partners. Its probability, however, remains low relative to Scenario One, owing to the institutional resilience and civilizational depth of the Iranian state.

The South Caucasus, as Buzan and Wæver theorized, functions as a security subcomplex in which the fates of its constituent states are inextricably linked to developments in adjacent regions. The current crisis demonstrates this interdependence with exceptional clarity. Azerbaijan, by virtue of its geographic proximity, demographic connections, and strategic investments, occupies the most exposed position within this subcomplex.

Azerbaijan's response to this evolving situation is expected to be guided by the principles that have defined its foreign policy under President Aliyev's leadership: strategic pragmatism, respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring states, protection of national interests, and the maintenance of balanced relations with all relevant powers. The Republic's demonstrated capacity for effective crisis management, its deepening strategic partnerships with Türkiye and the West, and its central role in regional energy and transport architecture provide a robust foundation for navigating the uncertainties ahead.
 

Across all three scenarios, Baku's core interest remains constant: a stable, cooperative, and rights-respecting Iran that serves as a partner rather than a source of instability on its southern border. The critical variable — whether Iran's trajectory follows an orderly, inclusive, and internationally supported transition or devolves into protracted fragmentation — will define the regional security environment for years to come.