TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran resumed operations on Monday after more than a year of negotiations between the two countries to ease tensions, Iran’s semi-official media reported.
A source at the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran told the Associated Press that the embassy has resumed its work in the Iranian capital, but he said that this would not be officially announced until the Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed the development.
But an Azerbaijani website news.az on Monday quoted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry as saying that the embassy in Iran has resumed operations at a new address in Tehran. The report added that the embassy was reopened after negotiations between Azerbaijan and Iran.
Relations between Tehran and Baku, which have long been tense, deteriorated further after a gunman was shot in January 2023 stormed the Azerbaijani embassy in the capital of Iran, in which the security chief was killed and two guards were injured.
Iran said the attack was based on a personal motive and that the gunman’s wife had disappeared after visiting the embassy, but Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called the attack a “terrorist attack”. Baku accused Tehran of supporting hardline Islamists trying to overthrow the government, a charge Tehran denied.
In April 2023, Azerbaijan expels four Iranian diplomats from Baku. A month later, Iran expelled four Azerbaijani diplomats who worked at the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the northwestern city of Tabriz.
The attack sparked a revival of long-standing tensions between the two neighbouring countries.
Relations between the two also remain tense because Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Israel in March 2023. Azerbaijan also maintains close ties with Israel, which Tehran considers its biggest regional enemy. Iran has repeatedly opposed improving relations between Azerbaijan and Israel.
Azerbaijan borders northwestern Iran and was part of the Persian Empire until the early 19th century. There are more than 12 million ethnic Azeris in Iran, representing the Islamic Republic’s largest minority group. That means maintaining good relations with Baku is even more important to Tehran.
There have been tensions between the two countries Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to hold on to its 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan seizes new territory through warfare.
Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have improved in recent years Ebrahim Raisithe era of the former Iranian president. In May, Iran and Azerbaijan opened a dam of Qiz Qalasi, or Castel of Girl in Azeri, on a shared border river in northwestern Iran. Aliyev attended the inauguration.
During the ceremony, Raisi said that the relationship between Tehran and Baku goes beyond neighboring countries and is “unbreakable.”
Raisi has passed away in a helicopter crash — which also killed the country’s foreign minister and others — shortly after the inauguration ceremony. His body was found a day after the crash.
