Azerbaijan just hosted Israel and Iran separately in the same week
1 hour ago · 15 October 2026Share
President of Israel Isaac Herzog during an official visit, January 31, 2023. File photo.Υπουργείο Εξωτερικών · CC BY-SA 2.0
Israel's president just went to Baku. He did not meet any Iranian official there.
He met Azerbaijan's president instead.
Isaac Herzog, Israel's President, landed in Baku about a day ago. He sat down with Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's President, at the Presidential Palace. It happened around Baku's summit on interaction and confidence-building measures across Asia, which Azerbaijan is hosting this week.
First, Herzog congratulated Aliyev. Azerbaijan's chairmanship of that summit just got extended, through to 2028. Then the two leaders talked about deepening cooperation between their countries. They also went through regional and international developments together.
Herzog says quote "Israel and Azerbaijan share a unique relationship" that has proven its value in complex times.
And that relationship already runs deep. Azerbaijan supplies a large share of Israel's oil. Israel has long sold Azerbaijan military equipment. While he was in Baku, Herzog also met Bahrain's Foreign Minister, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, to talk about the Abraham Accords.
Now here's the part that matters.
Two days before Herzog landed, Aliyev met someone else. Eskandar Momeni, Iran's Interior Minister, was received in Baku too.
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Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data. Baku, Azerbaijan on 20 April 2023. SentinelHub · CC BY 2.0
So Aliyev met the Israeli president and the Iranian interior minister in the same week. Just not at the same time. And not together.
Momeni briefed Aliyev on what Azerbaijan's presidency called ongoing negotiations aimed at easing regional tensions. He passed on greetings from Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran's President, who Momeni said had fondly recalled his recent meetings with Aliyev.
But here's what the readout doesn't say. It doesn't name who is negotiating. It doesn't give the terms. It doesn't say what part Azerbaijan is playing. And neither Israel nor Iran has said a word about these talks publicly.
Aliyev did say he hopes the tensions in the Middle East get resolved through negotiations. He mentioned meeting Pezeshkian several times recently, including in Turkmenistan just a few days before Momeni's own visit.
So what actually happened? No source shows Herzog and Momeni meeting each other. Speaking to each other. Or even being in Baku at the same time in any joint capacity. Azerbaijan held two separate bilateral meetings, two days apart, with two countries that do not talk to each other directly at all.
Azerbaijan is in a strange position to pull this off. It's a Muslim-majority country that borders Iran directly. And it has built close ties with Israel over many years anyway. That makes it one of the only capitals where leaders from both sides can show up in the same week.
So is Israel part of whatever Momeni was talking about? Nobody knows. Nothing in the Azerbaijani statement, or in anything Iran or Israel has said, connects that briefing to the Herzog visit. It's also not clear whether Saudi Arabia or the UAE know about these talks, or are involved in them at all. No Gulf state has commented on Momeni's visit or what it covered.
For now, what happened in Baku is two separate meetings with one common host. Not a diplomatic opening between Israel and Iran.
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