Azerbaijani President’s Representative for Special Assignments Khalaf Khalafov is planning talks with Iranian officials in Tehran on Tuesday.
The Azeri official will hold talks with senior Iranian authorities on the bilateral relations between Tehran and Baku, as well as the regional developments. In late September, Khalafov met and held talks with the Iranian ambassador to Baku Seyyed Abbas Mousavi.
Speaking at his weekly press conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanyani said Iran had a number of issues on its agenda regarding its ties with Baku, including the reopening of the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran.
Since the outbreak of the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (1992-1994), relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have always been tense. Tensions between Tehran and Baku reached their peak after the attack on the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Tehran on 27 January 2023. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called what happened to his country’s embassy in Tehran a pre-planned “terrorist attack,” prompting Baku to close its embassy in Tehran.
Today, friction between the two countries is so high that Iran and Azerbaijan accuse each other of planning a terrorist attack on their territories. Azerbaijan’s security services have arrested 19 people whom Baku has officially claimed Tehran sent to destabilise Azerbaijan’s national security.
