New spark in the powder keg that relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have become. An individual broke into the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran this morning armed with an assault rifle, killing the head of security and wounding two other guards, before being immobilized by an official.
The Iranian police, after his arrest, explained that the attacker had gone to the legation “with his two children” and that the attack responded to “personal and family reasons.” According to him, his wife had disappeared last year in the embassy compound.
The Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry, for its part, has held the Iranian authorities responsible for the security of its legation and has demanded an in-depth investigation of the attack, described as “terrorist” by President Ilham Aliev. Last year the Azerbaijani embassies in London and Paris were stormed by unarmed people.
The armed assault comes after a critical year in relations between the two nations of Shiite tradition. Just a fortnight ago, Azerbaijan appointed its first ambassador in Tel Aviv. The Iranian regime regularly accuses Azerbaijan of allowing Israeli espionage activities from its territory.
In the north of Iran Azeri – a Turkic language – is spoken exactly the same as in Azerbaijan and Tehran accuses Baku and Ankara of fanning – without much success – Azeri nationalism. The Supreme Guide himself, Ali Khamenei, is an Azeri.
Similar accusations are leveled against Iraqi Kurdistan – which maintains relations with Israel outside of Baghdad – in this case with the Kurds of Iran in its sights. This minority, linguistically related to the Persians, has played a vanguard role in the feminist protests in recent months against the regime of the ayatollahs.
The despotic regime of Ilham Aliev in Azerbaijan has gained new sympathy in the European Union for its status as an alternative to gas and especially oil from Russia. For its part, Armenia, sandwiched between the hostility of Turkey and Azerbaijan, depends on its military alliance with Russia and on the friendship of Iran and, increasingly, India.
It should be remembered that last fall, Iran (eight times more populous than Azerbaijan) went so far as to deploy troops alongside its neighbor to the north, claiming that it would not allow any forcible changes to its borders. In the preceding days, Azerbaijan had attacked Armenian territory, threatening the narrow strip of land that connects Armenia with Iran (and that separates, in turn, the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan from the rest of the country).
Likewise, Azerbaijan has taken advantage of the international context to tighten the screws on Nagorno Karabakh, the enclave of the Armenian population in its territory whose only link with the Republic of Armenia, since the 2020 war, was the Lachin corridor.
Said corridor – whose security is in charge of Russian troops – has been blocked for several weeks by Azerbaijani civilians, with alleged environmental arguments. The compensation demanded by Baku is the activation of the Zangezur corridor, through Armenian territory, to link Azerbaijan (and the Caspian Sea) with Nakhchivan and the Turkish border.
On the other hand, the north-south corridor between the Black Sea and the Arabian Sea, linking Russia, Georgia (weak link), Armenia and Iran, has gained new interest in light of the war in Ukraine. Also for those who insist that it is possible to isolate Russia. India, for its part, sees it as an alternative to the Suez Canal for its goods to reach Europe (avoiding Azerbaijan, Pakistan’s close ally).
