At the end of last month, the Islamic Republic conducted major military exercises near its border with Azerbaijan, a country that has deep and ancient connections with Iran. Since Azerbaijan and its neighbor, Armenia, became independent from the Soviet Union, Tehran has joined Moscow in backing the latter, while Baku has aligned itself with the West and developed strong ties with the Jewish state. Eran Lerman analyzes the situation from an Israeli perspective:

The Iranian maneuvers near Azerbaijan’s borders . . . were designed to intimidate the leadership in Baku, to deter it from curbing Iran’s illegal [oil] trade with Armenia, and to force Azerbaijan to downgrade its strategic relationship with Israel. . . . As tensions rise over its nuclear program, Tehran apparently hopes . . . to warn countries in the region against offering any assistance to Israel and other forces aligned against the Iranian regime. Ultimately, Iran seeks to frustrate what they suspect to be Israel’s plans and to deter Israeli leadership from acting against Iran.

Thus, the implications of Iranian pressure on Azerbaijan extend well beyond the confines of the southern Caucasus. It adds to a growing list of points of friction where the Iranian regime is overtly seeking to test the limits of international, Western, and ultimately Israeli (and Arab) responses. Israel must tread carefully in this complex region, where ancient hatreds often dominate. Explicit statements should be avoided. While the existing understandings with the Azeri government should be upheld and discreet intelligence sharing should continue, it would be unwise for Israel to make any commitments that cannot be realized, and that might exacerbate regional tensions.

At the same time, at the diplomatic level and as part of a broader discussion on Iran’s intentions and actions, Israel cannot ignore the Iranian pattern of intimidation. This should be one of the focal points in Israel’s ongoing effort to alert the U.S. administration and its Western allies to the escalating danger inherent in leaving Iranian actions unanswered.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.