At times, Georgia has appeared committed to closer ties with the EU. In December 2022, along with Azerbaijan and EU members Romania and Hungary, it signed a momentous deal to build an electric cable running 1,200km under the Black Sea as part of a project that would reduce the EU’s reliance on Russian oil and gas. A year later, in December 2023, Georgia was granted candidate status by the EU, which then-Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, a member of Georgian Dream, hailed as a “historic victory”.

Yet despite its ever-closer ties with Europe, Georgian Dream, whose party chairman is a Georgian oligarch is closely linked to Russia, has simultaneously been soft on Moscow since the war broke out. In February 2022, it refused to join Europe in imposing sanctions on Russia when it invaded Ukraine. Georgia went on to become a key conduit for Russia-bound goods, playing a crucial part in helping Russia’s economy weather Western sanctions. It welcomed Russia’s suspension of a flight ban to Georgia in 2023, and repeatedly accused the West of trying to draw it into the war in Ukraine.

Now, Georgia Dream appears to have made its final choice. Last Tuesday, after weeks of some of the largest protests Tbilisi has ever seen, the party passed a highly controversial foreign agents law, under which any NGOs or media outlets receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas would have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”. The law would effectively force certain political groups opposed to Georgian Dream to register as foreign agents or face large fines, and although Georgian Dream has maintained the law is about transparency, its leaders have already suggested it would be used to shield Georgia from Western liberal values. The vote was preceded by a brawl in Parliament; afterwards, raging protestors besieged the building. On Saturday, Georgia’s pro-EU President Salome Zourabichvili said she had vetoed the law, but her opposition will very likely be merely symbolic — Georgian Dream is anticipated to override the veto as soon as later this month.

Protesters have compared the law to Russian legislation used by the Kremlin to punish dissenters and force opposition non-profits to close. Many fear it will be used to the same ends in Georgia. But according to Inal Khashig, a journalist and political commentator from Abkhazia, one of the two Georgian regions under Russian occupation, it is what the law symbolises that is most concerning: “Few people understand, but the Law on Foreign Agents has a certain sacred meaning for the Kremlin,” Khashig wrote on Telegram. “This is a kind of oath of allegiance. Something like Kipling’s ‘you and I are of the same blood’.”

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If the law stands, and Georgian Dream escalates its crackdown on protestors using state-backed campaigns of intimidation, police violence, and armed thugs it has already unleashed on crowds over the last few weeks, Georgia will end up ostracised by Europe and the US and find itself steadily pulled back into Moscow’s orbit. This scenario risks threatening not only Georgia, but the whole of Europe, disturbing security and trade across Eurasia as well as EU energy politics and even the war in Ukraine. 

The consequences would be no less dramatic if Georgian Dream were to capitulate and rescind the law. Without such a powerful cudgel, the party would probably lose power in Georgia’s parliamentary elections in October, pathing the way for a full-scale westward tilt and eventually EU and perhaps even Nato membership. From the Kremlin’s perspective, this would be almost as serious as Ukraine joining the alliance.

The stakes of Georgia’s protests could hardly be higher, and will almost certainly cause ripple effects across the Black Sea region, which, since February 2022, has become a major and violent theatre of the war in Ukraine. Nearly from its start, Russia’s war in Ukraine has hampered its ability to project power in the Black Sea. By late 2022, Russia’s Black Sea fleet had been assailed by Ukrainian missiles and drones, while its vulnerable Kerch Strait Bridge, the only connection between occupied Crimea and mainland Russia, was constantly under assault. 

Moscow found itself increasingly vulnerable in a Black Sea region surrounded by hostile Nato and Nato-allied states — with the exception of Georgia and a stretch of occupied Ukrainian coastline. It soon deemed its long-time naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea to be too exposed to Ukrainian attacks to house its Black Sea fleet, and in late 2023, it announced the construction of a new base on the coast of occupied Abkhazia, just 30km from the border of Georgian-controlled territory. Georgian Dream was in no position to meaningfully oppose the move, and despite all its talk of the West trying to drag Georgia into the war in Ukraine, it was Russia that was seemingly bringing the war to Georgia’s doorstep. Since the base’s announcement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made no secret of the fact that the Ukrainian military would continue to target the Russian navy even in Abkhazia.

With few good alternatives, Russia would happily take advantage of a solidly Russia-aligned Georgia to strengthen its position along the Black Sea, potentially even building naval and air bases on sovereign Georgian territory. This could broaden the war into the eastern reaches of the Black Sea and Georgia itself.

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Georgia is not only an appealing ally from a military perspective, but also from an economic one. It lies at the heart of the Middle Corridor, a group of trade routes that connect Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus, whose potential is only beginning to become apparent. As Russia has been cut off from Western trade networks and maritime trade through the Red Sea has plummeted following the Houthis’ attacks of cargo ships, the Middle Corridor has grown increasingly attractive — not only does it bypass both problem areas, but planned railway modernisations will make it markedly faster than either of the two other routes in the next three years. It’s one of many reasons why the West wants to keep Georgia in its camp. 

Another is the new Black Sea submarine cable. In order to limit its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, the EU has embraced Azerbaijan and its abundant Caspian oil and gas reserves and the cable intended to transport Azeri energy to Europe would have to run through Georgia. According to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, not only would these new energy sources be used to enhance access to power in the Western Balkans and Moldova, both arenas in the West’s war of influence with Russia, but they could also aid the future reconstruction of Ukraine’s war-damaged energy infrastructure.

Both the Middle Corridor and the Black Sea cable project depend on Georgia remaining free from Russian domination. If, however, Georgia capitulates to Moscow, it could become a pariah in the eyes of the West and find itself chased out of the American-led economic market, nullifying the appeal of both the Middle Corridor and the cable. European energy deals with Azerbaijan would suddenly be imperiled, threatening the last decent option the continent had to maintain its energy needs, while EU trade with Central and East Asia would become more arduous and expensive than ever. Only Russia would stand to gain, as it would effectively exercise control over every significant overland trade route from Asia to Europe.

Yet Russia has stayed relatively quiet in recent weeks. Although Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has vocally supported Georgian Dream’s effort to pass the foreign agent law and expressed Russia’s interest in a “stable and predictable” Georgia, he has scoffed at the suggestion that the law has anything to do with Russia. So long as Georgian Dream stays the course and incorporates Georgia back into the Russkiy mir, the Russian world, Moscow has few reasons to devote much attention to it at a time while its focus is on Ukraine. 

That would, however, change dramatically if Georgia were to gaze westward again. An EU-aspiring Georgia that might eventually join Nato would necessitate a wholesale reorientation of Russian forces in its south. This would be particularly significant because forces in the Caucasus region near Georgia are under the command of Russia’s Southern Military District, which is also tasked with maintaining the occupation of Crimea and southeastern Ukraine. With potential Nato troops on its southern doorstep, the Southern Military District would be stretched to its limit and Russian forces would be spread thin at a time when they can least afford it.

But Georgia’s destiny is also highly symbolic. Having emerged as a promising young democracy, Georgia’s transformation into a Russian puppet state would be a devastating loss for the cause of global freedom. The good news, however, is that in Georgia, popular protests have historically had power — a similar wave of dissent forced Georgian Dream to withdraw the same foreign agent law in 2023. Now that the law has been passed, the task before the Georgian people is a far more difficult one. Any protestor in Tbilisi will tell you that they are fighting for the survival of their nation — but the truth is that riding on their shoulders is the fate of millions of others across the Eurasian heartland.

Tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan have been rising since the start of the year. In March, the latter became the first country with a Shiite Muslim majority to open an embassy in Israel. Iran, having the largest Shiite majority of any nation, and being Israel’s historic geopolitical nemesis, did not approve. Nor did it approve, in 2020, when Israeli-made Harop drones proved crucial in helping drive the Azerbaijani military towards victory over Armenia in the shockingly underreported Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Ties between Israel and Azerbaijan have grown increasingly close, and with Russia — traditionally the dominant regional power in the Caucasus — distracted by its engagement in Ukraine, Tehran fears that the balance of power is shifting in favour of Iran’s enemies.

Specifically, the Iranians are concerned that Azerbaijan might allow the Israeli military to use its territory as a launch pad — just as America feared Russia’s use of Cuba in the Cold War. The Azeris ruled out the possibility in March. But this has done little to calm tensions. Since January, a series of confrontations has driven relations between Iran and Azerbaijan to an all-time low that some fear could place them on the path to war.

Fazil Mustafa is a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, and one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of Iran. The day before his nation opened its new Tel Aviv embassy, he was shot in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Mustafa survived the assassination attempt, which the country’s foreign ministry appeared to blame on Tehran. Following his discharge from hospital, he emailed me to say there should be little doubt as to who orchestrated the attack against him. “All the suspicion and evidence obtained points directly to Iran,” wrote Mustafa, “because it doesn’t seem likely that such an act could have been committed against me from another source.”

It is difficult to independently verify these claims, which Iran denies. But, if true, it would be the second time this year that the country has attacked an Azerbaijani political target. In a separate incident, on January 27, a gunman stormed the country’s embassy in the Iranian capital, killing its head of security and wounding two others. Baku quickly suspended its diplomatic mission in Tehran and recalled its staff, although its consulates in other Iranian cities remained open. Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, has since blamed the Iranian government for the embassy attack. Tehran claims that the gunman was driven by “personal motivations”.

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A long history of enmity lies behind this tense relationship between the two nations. Although they both have predominantly Shiite populations, the Azeris are a Turkic people and Azerbaijan’s ethnic ties to Turkey have underpinned its foreign policy ever since it regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The Republic of Azerbaijan’s founding president, Heydar Aliyev (father of the current leader), has previously described Azerbaijan and Turkey as “one nation, two states”. This irritates the Iranians, as Tehran sees Ankara as a regional rival.

Relations are further complicated by Iran’s marginalisation of its large Azeri minority. More ethnic Azeris live within Iran’s borders than in Azerbaijan itself: the community is estimated to number anywhere between 15 and 40 million people. They are the second-largest ethnic group in Iran, and are treated with great suspicion by the national government, which fears Azeri secessionism in the country’s North-West.

Iran accuses Azerbaijan of stoking separatist sentiment in the country, which Baku denies. But this has done little to calm nerves in Tehran. It was a similar — and similarly widely-ignored — geopolitical paranoia that drove Russia to invade Ukraine last year.  A failure to treat the Iranian threat more seriously could have similarly devastating consequences.

The more recent antagonism between Azerbaijan and Iran can largely be attributed to the changing geopolitical realities in the Caucasus since the brief war over Karabakh in 2020. Recognised as the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan under international law, Karabakh is home to a large ethnic Armenian minority and was illegally occupied by the Armenian military for more than a quarter of a century before being reclaimed by Baku. The 44-day conflict was suspended by a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement, but a formal peace treaty has yet to be signed. The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were reported to be resuming talks in Brussels at the weekend.

Tehran enjoys close relations with Armenia, a nation often considered part of “Greater Iran”. Azerbaijan’s victory in Karabakh was, therefore, a setback for both nations: Azerbaijan reclaimed control over part of the highway that links Iran to Armenia, which is a critical trade route that also connects Tehran to the Black Sea and Russia. Azerbaijan has already imposed a steep tax on Iranian trucks carrying goods to Armenia, which it accuses of supplying separatists in Karabakh. Mustafa claims that, as a result of this new threat to its interests, Tehran is actively trying to sabotage the peace process in Karabakh.

“Iran is trying to conduct a very active policy in the South Caucasus. It acts with the idea of filling the vacuum created in the region after Russia’s war with Ukraine,” he writes. “Although Iran does not have the ability to influence the processes in the entire South Caucasus, it has made attempts to hinder the achievement of stability in the region and the conclusion of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia.” Indeed, it is possible that Iran might provide military support to ethnic Armenian separatists; recent reports suggest that Tehran might supply this nation of “Greater Iran” with the same suicide drones it provided Russian forces in Ukraine.

Emboldened by its military victory in Karabakh — and a stockpile of high-grade Israeli arms — Baku appears unlikely to back down. Further escalation is possible, if not probable. Azerbaijan also knows that it can also rely on the support of its main ally, Turkey. The two countries have a mutual defense agreement in place and, assured by its membership of Nato, Ankara is unlikely to shy away from supporting the Azeris against the Iranians. Were that to occur, Moscow would feel obliged to step into the conflict. It is this risk of entanglement that makes the current standoff so dangerous.

Geopolitical alliances are key to preventing conflicts. They give smaller nations a degree of security against the threat posed by their larger, more malevolent neighbours. However, they can also have terrible consequences. They can cause a conflict to quickly cascade, as was the case in the Balkans in 1914: the Archduke was shot by a Bosnian Serb, which led to a standoff between Austria-Hungary and Serbia that later dragged in Russia before exploding into a world war.

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There are a number of reasons why there is a real danger of this in the Caucasus: unlike in Ukraine, where both regional and global powers have refrained from intervening directly against a nuclear-armed Russia, neither Turkey nor Iran are restrained by the danger of mutually-assured destruction. Israel, as a responsible actor that often operates by stealth, wouldn’t use a warhead against the Iranians. And, if Turkey’s military adventurism in the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, and northern Iraq, is anything to go by, Ankara looks unlikely to abandon one of its closest allies.

At the same time, a full-scale war between regional powers in the south Caucasus remains a worst-case scenario, says Michael Doran, the director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. “The likelihood of a direct military confrontation is probably limited,” Doran told me. “If a war were to actually break out between Azerbaijan and Iran it would risk bringing in Turkey and Israel against Iran and that, as a military alignment against Iran, is probably the thing Iran fears most.” Tehran would not be able to compete with their combined strength.

Tehran will also be hesitant to escalate the confrontation for fear of provoking an internal backlash from its Azeri minority. What’s more likely is that Iran will utilise more covert tactics to strike at Azerbaijan — tactics that give Tehran a degree of plausible deniability. It has form on this front, Iran has long used proxies to pursue its regional goals, most famously Hezbollah in Lebanon; it supports similar radical Shia elements in Azerbaijan. Mustafa claims that “Iran has allocated major funds for the spread of religious fundamentalism in the South Caucasus … it tries to use mosques, different groups, communities and individuals” to achieve these aims.

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With so much international attention focused on the war in Ukraine, this standoff in the south Caucasus has largely flown under the Western radar. Doran is particularly scathing of America’s failures to support the Azeris against Tehran: “This administration in Washington is not viewing Azerbaijan as a counter-balance to Iran,” he says. “That’s because it isn’t looking to counter Iran in any significant way, which is unfortunate.” America has not learned any lessons from Syria, where its failure to properly commit to intervention left the door open for Russia to step in and help Bashar al-Assad cling onto power.

But a war in the south Caucasus could set off a unfortunate chain of events. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has emerged as a key alternative energy supplier to the EU: between 2021 and 2022, Baku’s gas exports to Europe increased from eight billion cubic meters to an estimated 11.5 billion, and that number is expected to rise to 20 billion by 2027. A military conflict would drastically damage Baku’s production and export capacity. Without Azerbaijan’s oil, European sanctions against Russia might become untenable. In other words, a conflict in the south Caucasus would strengthen Moscow.

Modern warfare is rarely an isolated battle between two states: it is to understand this fact that we teach the First World War. And what was true in the 20th century is even more true now, when our interconnected global economies allow the shockwaves of war to reverberate far away from the frontline. The energy crisis that arose in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine is a vivid recent example. From Washington, London, or Brussels, the Iran-Azerbaijan border might seem like a distant Eurasian hinterland — as the Donbas once did. But it is time we accepted that a faraway war can very quickly come home.