A new CNN report is pulling back the curtain on one of the most sensitive parts of Israel’s war against Iran, a covert regional network that allegedly placed Israeli elite forces, Mossad personnel and rescue units around Iran’s borders, including inside Azerbaijan, just miles from Iranian territory.

According to CNN, Israel secretly deployed military and intelligence units to several locations in southern Azerbaijan during the war, near Iran’s northern border and roughly 60 miles from Tabriz, a major Iranian city later struck by Israel. The reported force included special operations troops, Mossad operatives and Israel’s elite heliborne combat-and-rescue personnel. What began as a possible emergency rescue footprint for downed Israeli pilots reportedly expanded into intelligence-gathering, drone operations and a forward perch for watching northern Iran.

Azerbaijan shares a long border with Iran, has deep security and energy ties with Israel, and sits beside a sensitive Iranian region with a large ethnic Azerbaijani population. For years, Tehran has feared that Baku’s relationship with Jerusalem could give Israel access to Iran’s northern flank. CNN’s report, if accurate, suggests that fear was not theoretical.

One of the most explosive claims is that Israeli preparations began before the war’s opening strikes, with surveillance equipment and intelligence assets reportedly placed near the Azerbaijan-Iran border. CNN says Israel initially planned some of the operation to coincide with earlier strikes that were later called off by President Trump, but Israel moved ahead with parts of the covert mission anyway as it assessed that diplomacy with Tehran was unlikely to hold.

The report also links the Azerbaijani front to the killing of Rahman Moghaddam, a senior IRGC intelligence figure Israel accused of running overseas operations and helping plan a 2024 assassination attempt against Trump. A day after Moghaddam was killed, drones struck Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave, damaging airport infrastructure and wounding civilians. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev blamed Iran and called it an act of terror. Tehran denied responsibility.

That was not the only Iranian-linked threat tied to Azerbaijan. Days later, Azerbaijani authorities said they had foiled an IRGC plot targeting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the Israeli embassy in Baku, an Ashkenazi synagogue and a leader of the Mountain Jewish community. Israel later publicly said the Mossad, IDF and Shin Bet had helped expose a wider IRGC terror network aimed at Israeli, Jewish and Western targets abroad.

CNN’s report says Azerbaijan was only one piece of a larger Israeli regional architecture. The network allegedly included secret facilities in Iraq for logistics and possible search-and-rescue missions, Israeli air-defense deployments in the United Arab Emirates, and a position in Somaliland that could support long-range flights toward Iran. Taken together, the reported sites placed Israel around Iran’s northern, western and southern approaches, extending reach and sustaining pressure far beyond what airpower from Israel alone could provide.

Azerbaijan is fiercely denying the claim. Its Foreign Ministry called the CNN report “entirely baseless,” said Baku had repeatedly rejected the allegations before publication, and demanded CNN issue a retraction. Azerbaijan insists it has never allowed its territory to be used for military or intelligence operations against another state.

Israel has not publicly confirmed the reported deployments. But the picture emerging from CNN and regional reporting is clear, Israel’s campaign against Iran was not just a series of strikes. It was a carefully built regional machine designed to surround the Islamic Republic, reach deep into its territory, rescue pilots if needed, hunt IRGC operatives, and disrupt the terror networks Tehran uses far from home.

For Iran, the message is brutal. Its proxies are being hit across the region, its officers are being hunted, and its own neighborhood may no longer be safe ground.