The Paradox of Israel’s Role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: A Christian Bastion Betrayed?
IN FOCUS, 14 Apr 2025
Diran Noubar – TRANSCEND Media Service
7 Apr 2025 – Israel is often portrayed as a frontline defender of the Western world, a bulwark against the perceived threat of radical Islam. This narrative, echoed by supporters globally, casts Israel as a nation fighting not just for its own survival but for the preservation of Judeo-Christian values against an encroaching Islamic tide. Yet, this image is starkly contradicted by Israel’s extensive military support to Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority nation, in its conflict with Armenia, the world’s oldest Christian state. This support, including the provision of advanced drones and weaponry, was instrumental in Azerbaijan’s decisive victory over Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) war, culminating in the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh’s Armenian population by 2023. Far from safeguarding a Christian ally surrounded by Turkic and Islamic powers stretching from the Bosphorus to China, Israel’s actions have bolstered an autocratic regime against a democratic Christian nation, raising profound questions about its strategic priorities and moral consistency. This article explores this paradox, arguing that Armenia, not Israel, has historically served as a protector of Western civilization in the region, and examines the implications of Israel’s choices.
Armenia: A Christian Outpost in a Turkic-Islamic Ring
Armenia’s historical role as a Christian nation is unparalleled. In 301 AD, it became the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion, predating even the Roman Empire’s conversion. Situated in the South Caucasus, Armenia lies at a geopolitical crossroads, encircled by predominantly Muslim and Turkic nations: Turkey to the west, Azerbaijan to the east, Iran to the south, and the broader Turkic world extending through Central Asia to China. This “Turkic-Islamic ring” has shaped Armenia’s history of resilience, most notably through its survival of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, which killed 1.5 million Armenians and sought to erase their presence from Anatolia.
For centuries, Armenia has acted as a cultural and religious buffer, preserving Christian traditions amid pressures from Islamic empires—be it the Seljuks, Ottomans, or Safavids. Its location made it a strategic outpost for Western interests, a role it continued during the Cold War as a Soviet republic allied with Russia against NATO-aligned Turkey. Today, Armenia remains a democratic state with a strong Christian identity, standing alone in a region where its neighbors—Turkey and Azerbaijan—share linguistic, cultural, and increasingly political ties rooted in Pan-Turkism. The 2020 war and the 2023 fall of Artsakh, a historically Armenian enclave, underscore this isolation, as Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s backing, expelled 120,000 Armenians from their ancestral lands, erasing a Christian presence that had endured for millennia.
In this context, Armenia’s struggle is not merely nationalistic but existential—a defense of its Christian heritage against a resurgent Turkic-Islamic axis. This aligns with the historical role of protecting “the Occident,” a term evoking Europe’s Christian civilization, more than Israel’s geographically distant conflict with its Arab neighbors. Yet, Israel’s support for Azerbaijan complicates this narrative, revealing a policy driven not by ideological solidarity but by pragmatic geopolitics.
Israel’s Strategic Alliance with Azerbaijan
Israel’s relationship with Azerbaijan, a secular Shiite Muslim state, is a cornerstone of its foreign policy in the Caucasus. Since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the two nations have forged a deep partnership, rooted in mutual interests: Azerbaijan supplies Israel with roughly 40% of its oil, while Israel provides Azerbaijan with advanced weaponry, accounting for nearly 70% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports between 2016 and 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This arsenal—including Harop loitering munitions, LORA missiles, and Hermes drones—proved decisive in Azerbaijan’s 2020 campaign against Artsakh, enabling precise strikes that overwhelmed Armenian defenses and facilitated the 2023 takeover.
The driving force behind this alliance is Israel’s rivalry with Iran, Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor. Azerbaijan shares a 611-kilometer border with Iran, a nation Israel views as its primary existential threat due to its nuclear ambitions and support for groups like Hezbollah. Azerbaijan’s secular government, despite its Muslim majority, has tense relations with Iran, which has historically supported Armenia and accused Azerbaijan of hosting Israeli intelligence operations—a claim both nations deny. For Israel, Azerbaijan offers a strategic foothold to monitor and counter Iran, a benefit that outweighs any ideological affinity with Armenia’s Christian identity.
This pragmatism was evident in the lead-up to Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive. Flight tracking data revealed multiple Azerbaijani cargo planes traveling between Israel’s Ovda military base and airfields near Artsakh, ferrying weapons even as Western leaders urged de-escalation. The result was a swift, brutal campaign that displaced Artsakh’s entire Armenian population, an outcome that critics argue bears Israel’s fingerprints. Far from defending a fellow religious minority, Israel empowered an autocratic regime led by Ilham Aliyev, whose family has ruled Azerbaijan since 1993, to crush a democratic Christian enclave.
The Hypocrisy of the “Defender of the West” Narrative
Israel’s supporters often frame its conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran as a broader struggle against Islamic extremism, positioning Israel as a shield for Western values. This rhetoric gained traction after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, with figures like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoking a shared civilizational fight. Yet, this narrative falters when applied to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Armenia, not Israel, stands as the lone Christian nation resisting a Turkic-Islamic encirclement, a role that mirrors the historical Crusader states or Byzantium’s stand against Ottoman expansion. By arming Azerbaijan, Israel has not only undermined this Christian bastion but also bolstered a regime allied with Turkey—a NATO member with its own history of aggression against Armenians and Kurds.
The contradiction is stark: if Israel’s mission includes protecting the Judeo-Christian world from Islam, why has it furnished the tools for Azerbaijan to displace Christians in Artsakh? The answer lies in realpolitik. Israel’s security calculus prioritizes immediate threats—namely Iran—over abstract solidarity with a distant Christian ally. Azerbaijan’s oil and strategic location trump Armenia’s cultural kinship, exposing the “defender of the West” claim as selective and opportunistic.
Moreover, Azerbaijan’s victory has strengthened the Turkey-Azerbaijan axis, a Pan-Turkic bloc that threatens not just Armenia but regional stability. Turkey’s role in the 2020 war, providing drones, military advisors, and allegedly Syrian mercenaries, amplified Azerbaijan’s success. This partnership, now emboldened, extends Turkey’s influence into the Caucasus and Central Asia, challenging Western interests more than Iran’s regional proxies ever could. Israel’s arms sales, intended to counter one adversary, may have inadvertently empowered another.
Consequences for Armenia and the Christian World
The fall of Artsakh is a tragedy with global resonance. For Armenians, it marks the loss of a cultural heartland, with ancient churches and monasteries now under Azerbaijani control, many already destroyed or defaced. The ethnic cleansing of 120,000 people in 2023 echoes the Armenian Genocide, a wound still unhealed. For the broader Christian world, it represents the erosion of a historic outpost, weakening the narrative of a shared Judeo-Christian front against external threats.
Armenia’s isolation is compounded by its strained alliances. Russia, its traditional protector, couldn’t intervene decisively in 2020 or 2023, distracted by Ukraine and possibly placated by Azerbaijan’s gas exports to Europe. The West, despite rhetorical support, imposed no sanctions on Azerbaijan, prioritizing energy security over human rights. Israel’s role as Azerbaijan’s arms supplier thus stands out as a pivotal factor, tipping the balance against Armenia when it most needed support.
Reassessing Israel’s Role
Israel’s actions in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict challenge the simplistic portrayal of it as a global defender of Western values. While its fight against Iran and Islamist groups is real, its willingness to arm Azerbaijan against a Christian nation reveals a policy guided by self-interest rather than principle. Armenia, by contrast, has borne the burden of defending its faith and identity against overwhelming odds, a role that aligns more closely with the historical guardianship of “the Occident.”
This paradox demands reflection. If Israel seeks to uphold its image as a moral actor, it must reconcile its strategic choices with the values it claims to champion. Recognizing the Armenian Genocide, as many urge, could be a start—acknowledging a shared history of suffering rather than enabling its modern echoes. Curtailing arms sales to Azerbaijan, or at least ensuring they are not used against civilians, would signal a commitment beyond mere geopolitics.
For now, Armenia’s plight underscores a bitter irony: the nation most directly protecting a Christian legacy in a Muslim-majority region was undermined not by its Islamic neighbors alone, but by a supposed ally of the West. As the dust settles over Artsakh, the question lingers: who truly stands as the shield of civilization in this fractured world? The answer may lie not in Jerusalem, but in Yerevan.
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Diran Noubar, an Italian-Armenian born in France, has lived in 11 countries until he moved to Armenia. He is a world-renowned, critically-acclaimed documentary filmmaker and war reporter. Starting in the early 2000’s in New York City, Diran produced and directed over 20 full-length documentary films. He is also a singer/songwriter and guitarist in his own band and runs a nonprofit charity organization, wearemenia.org.
Tags: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Eastern Europe, Israel, Politics, West Asia
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Apr 2025.
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