have taken a nosedive in recent weeks with deep unease in Tehran about expanding military cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel.
The friction has prompted uncommon—even weird—diplomatic jabs, including Iranian stories about the Azerbaijani government sponsoring a gay parade in Baku.
Each side has recalled its ambassador. Azerbaijan has closed a border crossing. And Iranian warships have repotedly been maneuvering in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan also refused entry at the Baku airport to Farid Asiri, a senior aide to the Supreme Leader.
“Relations between Azer-baijan and Iran have become very hot,” said Elhan Shahinoglu, director of a foreign policy research organization in the Azerbaijani capital.
Azerbaijan recently signed a $1.6 billion deal to buy Israeli-made weapons. This has created deep unease in Tehran, which has accused Azerbaijan of giving Israel access to its military bases to keep watch over Iran. Both Israel and Azerbaijan have denied those Iranian allegations.
On May 16, a group of demonstrators in Baku protested outside the Iranian embassy holding posters that mocked the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Numbering about 100, the protestors were affiliated with the International Diaspora Center, the World Congress of Azerbaijanis and the Southern Azerbaijan Independence Party, whose platform calls for the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan to become indepednent of Iran. Iran has always been sensitive about Azerbaijani support for the independence of its northwestern provinces, so it didn’t take the party’s protests lightly.
First, Iran summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to “protest over insulting religious sanctities,” a reference to the posters about Khomeini. But then Iran upped the ante by recalling its ambassador from Baku because, according to the Fars news agency, Azerbaijan was “violating all codes of good neighborly relations and principles of Islamic solidarity for the sake of Israel.”
While the comment about Israel refers chiefly to the arms deal, that statement also relates to the arrest in late March of 22 people said to be part of an Iranian-backed plot to kill American and Israeli diplomats in Baku, allegations that Tehran has vigorously denied.
A few days after Tehran recalled its ambassador, in a sign of heating diplomatic tensions, Azerbaijan called its own envoy home.
Some Azerbaijani lawmakers have proposed renaming their country Northern Azerbaijan in a show of solidarity with the much larger number of Azeris who live in Iran. The proposal did not gain traction in the parliament, but Iran is concerned that statements like these and the protest outside the Iranian embassy could foment an active secessionist movement among its Azeri population, a subject that always prompts fears in Tehran.
Iran has long souht to shape Azerbaijani public opinion in the border zone, broadcasting television programs in the Azeri language. Tensions between the two countries manifest most acutely in these border regions, where the two countries frequently resort to closing border crossings, causing truck drivers and their cargo to remain stranded for days on end.
Rivalries show up most frequently in press statements. Iranian officials recently mocked Azerbaijan for organizing what they called a gay parade during the popular Eurovision Song Contest that was hosted this year by Azerbaijan.
“We heard that the government of Azerbaijan is hosting the international Eurovision Song Contest and that during this contest there will also be a gay parade,” Fars quoted Ayatollah Sobhani as saying. Though Eurovision draws a large number of gay fans, there was no gay parade in Azerbaijan. But that fact didn’t stop the harsh rhetoic.
“The ban on hejab for Muslim women and the gay parade in Azerbaijan show Azerbaijani officials’ cooperation with international Zionism and their secret objectives,” Fars quoted Deputy Zohreh Elahian as saying.
“Similar to the actions that destroyed the system in Tunisia and other Islamic states, which caused leaders’ downfall, the gay parade and other such actions in Azerbaijan will cause a religious revolution in the country,” she said.
Officials in Muslim-majority Azerbaijan were swift to clarify that there was no gay parade: “I do not know who put this idea into their heads in Iran,” said Ali Hasanov, a spokesman for the Azerbaijani president. “We are hosting a song contest, not a gay parade.”
But the mythical gay parade stories were flouted in Iran for weeks before dying out.