A long visit by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Baku is in the focus of the Azerbaijani media. The Israeli minister spent a total of five days in the Azerbaijani capital, meeting with many of the country's senior officials, including the president, the prime minister, the defense minister, the foreign minister, and the head of the Border Guard. Officially it is said that the talks in Baku were about bilateral cooperation and the situation in the region. The conversation with President Aliyev was said to have taken several hours.

The close cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan includes not only economic and political issues, but also a very close - and for Israel very lucrative - billion dollar military cooperation. The oil-rich and gas-rich state in the South Caucasus, which has an unresolved territorial dispute with its neighboring country Armenia, covers about 40% of Israel's oil imports, and is a viable importer of state-of-the-art Israeli weapons, including the "Harop" war drones and the "Spike ER" anti-tank guided missiles. Azerbaijani military expert Ramaldanov believes that further arms deals were signed between Baku and Jerusalem during the Israel Defense Minister's visit. The Israeli political scientist Yury Botcharov, however, does not believe that the true results of the visit will be publicly revealed.

In fact, many things happen secretly in Israeli-Azerbaijani relations. According to a cable report by WikiLeaks, Azerbaijan's head of state has once compared Israeli-Azerbaijani cooperation with an iceberg that is 90% hidden under water.

The Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance becomes explosive because Azerbaijan, whose population consists mainly of Shiite Muslims, borders directly with Iran. Despite a certain religious closeness between the two states, the relationship between Baku and Tehran is characterized by mutual distrust. Post-Soviet Azerbaijan, unlike Iran, is a secular state in which religion is banished from political life. The Azerbaijani security authorities also regularly suppress allegedly pro-Iranian Islamists and organizations. There have been allegations from Iran in the past that Israeli intelligence agencies have carried out their operations against Iran from Azerbaijan. In 2009, when Israeli President Peres arrived for an official visit to Baku, threats came directly from the head of the Iranian General Staff, General Hasan Firusabadi. The same general accused Azerbaijan's government of "anti-Islamic policy" in 2011.

It was only after Hasan Rouhani's election as Iran's president and Tehran agreeing on the international nuclear deal that the tension in Iranian-Azerbaijani relations waned. It is unclear how the situation will unfold in the region in the face of the US cancellation of the deal combined with new strict US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

If one believes the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, the visit to Baku was connected to another important issue for Israel, which goes far beyond Israeli-Azerbaijani relations. While Lieberman was in Azerbaijan, Turkish President Erdogan also came for a one-day visit to Baku. Although the official occasion of Erdogan's visit to Azerbaijan was unrelated. Yet, the Israeli press does not believe in such coincidences, suggesting that the South Caucasus republic may have been a place for secret Turkish-Israeli talks. In view of the growing Iranian influence in Syria, -Turkey and Israel are now working to normalize their once-close ties. Ankara also hopes to strengthen its troubled relations with the US by strengthening its ties with Israel.