As the Iran war enters its first month, the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows, remains effectively shut. A global energy crisis looms. Brent crude futures stood at around $109 per barrel on Friday. Analysts warn they could rise to $200 per barrel by June if the conflict drags on. Gulf exporters, bludgeoned by Iranian missiles and unable to sell their oil, are reeling from the shock. Along with Russia, however, one regional producer is cashing in on the bonanza — Iran’s northwestern neighbor and Israel’s ally, Azerbaijan.

Some are starting to wonder, though, how long this will last, because according to tracking data, Israel secured 46.4% of its oil — totaling 94,000 barrels per day — from the South Caucasian state in 2025.

The question gained urgency in the early days of the conflict when on March 5 two separate drones, suspected to be Iranian, crashed into the terminal building of the Nakhichevan airport and near a school building in the village of Shakarabad. Might Nakhichevan, a Soviet-era exclave that is formally part of Azerbaijan, have been targeted as a warning to Baku not to let Israel use its territory as a launching pad for another front against Iran?

Most critically, perhaps, Azerbaijan’s intelligence services announced they had foiled an earlier plot organized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to blow up the oil pipeline running from Baku via Tbilisi to loading terminals in Ceyhan on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast.