US military intervention in Iran could spark hostilities not just in the Gulf and Israel, but also Turkey and Azerbaijan

A US military intervention in Iran doesn’t just risk exposing Gulf states and Israel to Iranian retaliation. It also raises the spectre of a regional war spilling over into the Caucasus. With no US or Israeli targets within its borders, Iran has threatened to retaliate against Israel and US military bases in the Middle East, a threat directed at Gulf states and Israel rather than NATO member Turkey. While Iran is unlikely to attack Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase that hosts the US military’s 39th Air Base Wing, an uptick of ethnic nationalism, particularly among Azeris, a Turkic group who account from anywhere between 16 and 24 per cent of the Iranian population, could draw Iran’s neighbours, Turkey and Azerbaijan, into a wider regional conflict on the principle of ‘you may not want war but war wants you.’ Militant supporters of Israel in the United States, like the influential, far-right, Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum appear willing to shoulder the risk. The Forum has advocated a US targeting of Azeri units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC, which the Forum describes as the Guards’ most brutal. The IRGC is among the prime targets that the US military has presented to US President Donald Trump.