Azerbaijan reopens its embassy in Iran as the two countries try to ease tensions

TEHRAN: The embassy of Azerbaijan in Tehran resumed its work Monday after more than a year of negotiations between the two countries to ease tensions, Iran’s semi-official media outlets reported.
A source in the Azeri embassy in Tehran told The Associated Press that the embassy has resumed its operations in the Iranian capital, but said it won’t be officially announced until the Iranian foreign ministry confirms the development.
But an Azeri website news.az Monday quoted Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry as saying that its embassy in Iran has restarted work at a new address in Tehran. The report added that the embassy reopened following negotiations between Azerbaijan and Iran.
Relations between Tehran and Baku, which have been tense for a long time, soured further after a gunman in January 2023 stormed Azerbaijan’s embassy in Iran’s capital, killing its security chief and wounding two guards.
Iran said the attack was based on a personal cause, and said the gunman’s wife had disappeared after a visit to the embassy, but Azeri President Ilham Aliyev called the assault a “terrorist attack.” Baku accused Tehran of supporting hard-line extremists who tried to overthrow its government, a charge Tehran denied.
In April 2023, Azerbaijan expelled four Iranian diplomats from Baku. A month later, Iran expelled four Azeri diplomats, who had been working in Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northwestern city of Tabriz.
The attack spiked long-simmering tensions between the two neighboring countries.
Relations between the two also remain tense because Azerbaijan in March 2023 opened an embassy in Israel. Azerbaijan also maintains close ties to Israel, which Tehran views as its top regional enemy. Iran has repeatedly opposed improving relations between Azerbaijan and Israel.
Azerbaijan borders Iran’s northwest and belonged to the Persian Empire until the early 19th century. There are over 12 million Ethnic Azeris in Iran who represent the Islamic Republic’s largest minority group. That means maintaining good relations with Baku is even more important for Tehran.
There have been tensions between the two countries as Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to maintain its 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan seizes new territory through warfare.
Iran-Azerbaijan’s relations improved during the era of the late Ebrahim Raisi. In May, Iran and Azerbaijan inaugurated a dam of Qiz Qalasi, or Castel of Girl in Azeri, on a joint border river in northwest Iran. Aliyev attended the inauguration.
During the ceremony, Raisi said that the relationship between Tehran and Baku is beyond neighboring and is “unbreakable.”
Raisi died in a helicopter crash — that also killed the country’s foreign minister and others — just after the inauguration ceremony. His body was found a day after the crash.