News - Israel MoD Director General visits Azerbaijan only 2 days before Baku’s military aggression against Karabakh

Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MoD), Eyal Zami, visited Azerbaijan just two days before Baku's military aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), reports the Army Radio. The visit took place amid increased Israeli arms supplies to Azerbaijan in recent weeks. Israel is in the process of publicly expanding bilateral ties with Azerbaijan, a Shiite Muslim majority country with close ties to Turkey. In March, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov formally opened his country’s first embassy in Israel. In May, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Azerbaijan, where he discussed the "Iranian threat" and bilateral ties. Israel is one of the arms suppliers to Azerbaijan. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Israel has provided 69 percent of Azerbaijan’s major arms imports between 2016 and 2020, accounting for 17 percent of Israel's arms exports during that period. Israel increased the supply of weapons to Azerbaijan during the latter’s 44-day war against Artsakh in 2020. It is no secret that the two pillars of these relations are the position of Azerbaijan on the northern border of Iran, and the fact that Israel buys more than 30 percent of its oil from Azerbaijan.