A woman waves an Iranian flag near a billboard depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, in Tehran, Iran, on May 25, 2026. (Credit: Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters)
Israel secretly deployed elite military units and intelligence teams in Azerbaijan during the war against Iran as part of a network of clandestine sites spread across the Middle East, aimed at facilitating operations against Iran, the American channel CNN reported Friday, citing several sources familiar with the matter.
The forces operated from several sites in southern Azerbaijan, near Iran's northern border and, at their closest point, just about a hundred kilometers from the Iranian city of Tabriz, which Israel struck during the war between late February and mid-April, the U.S. channel reports. Special commando units were also deployed there and carried out intelligence gathering missions as well as drone operations, giving Israel a strategic vantage point allowing it to monitor northern Iran during the conflict.
The operation in Azerbaijan, a country that shares a 765-kilometer border with Iran, involved several dozen military personnel, including members of the Israeli special forces, the elite airborne combat and rescue unit, as well as Mossad staff, the channel specified.
The Azerbaijani embassy in the United States, however, denied these reports. "We strongly reject the unfounded allegations regarding the alleged use of Azerbaijani territory for operations against third-party countries," it told CNN.
A senior Iranian official killed
The preparations allegedly began several weeks before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran on Feb. 28 with a massive bombing campaign jointly carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran. In early January, as the Islamic Republic cracked down on anti-government protests resulting in thousands of deaths, Israel was preparing a clandestine mission along the Azerbaijan-Iran border. According to the U.S. channel, it was a "preliminary operation meant to prepare for further actions," notably "the installation of listening devices and intelligence equipment in the region."
One of the major operations launched from Azerbaijan — which maintains close military, economic, and energy ties with Israel — was the March 4 assassination of Rahman Moghaddam, who reportedly led the intelligence division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The next day, two drones struck Nakhchivan, an isolated Azerbaijani region wedged between Armenia and Iran, injuring two people. One of the drones hit the terminal at Nakhchivan International Airport, while the other landed near a school in the village of Chakarabad. Iran denied being behind this attack.
On March 6, Baku’s security service announced it had foiled an IRGC plot targeting critical infrastructure as well as Israeli targets. A few weeks later, Israel publicly acknowledged that it was a joint operation involving Mossad, the Israeli military, and the Shin Bet internal security service.
A network of 'forward positions'
The sites located in Azerbaijan were part of a series of clandestine military bases and installations spread across several countries, notably in Iraq, in the United Arab Emirates, and in Somaliland. Initially set up as potential rescue teams in case of emergency, these deployments reportedly gradually evolved to become "military and intelligence collection outposts." Altogether, these deployments reportedly allowed Israel to station forces on Iran’s southern, western and northern flanks during the war, thus extending its operational capability by several hundred kilometers into Iranian territory.
According to CNN, these forward positions helped Israel "maintain repeated waves of strikes against targets across the country." At the same time, Somaliland is said to have provided Israel with an additional military position, potentially offering its military aircraft a stopover point for long-distance flights to Iran. The military presence in Azerbaijan also gave Israel another base for possible aerial rescue missions in case a pilot was shot down, and positions from which to spy on Iran.
