This chapter, from The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict: The Original “Frozen Conflict” and European Security (ed. Svante E. Cornell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), examines how Tehran approaches the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
Shaffer argues that Iran’s policy is driven by pragmatic security concerns rather than the religious solidarity often assumed to guide it.
The chapter shows how Iran’s stance is shaped above all by its desire to prevent ethnic mobilization among its own large Azerbaijani minority, along with its broader relationships with Russia and the United States. In doing so, it challenges the common assumption that the Sunni-Shiite divide is a defining fault line in Middle East politics, since Iran’s handling of a conflict between two Muslim-majority states doesn’t follow that pattern.
