Azerbaijan and Iran are holding a joint military drill in ‘liberated territories’. While Azerbaijan has not officially revealed where the joint exercise is taking place, Iranian media has written that they are being held in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The drill, dubbed the Araz-2025 joint exercise, began on Sunday and is scheduled to conclude on Wednesday.
According to Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry, the drill aimed at ‘further strengthening the steadily developing Azerbaijan–Iran military cooperation’ and contributing to ‘enhancing mutual trust’ between them.
According to the Tehran Times, an English-language daily owned by the Iranian state-affiliated Mehr news agency, the exercise involves special forces from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
On Sunday, they quoted the deputy commander for operations in the IRGC, Vali Ma’dani, as saying the exercise was a ‘significant step toward reinforcing the security of shared borders and countering possible threats’.
According to the Tehran Times, a ‘select IRGC special forces battalion’ and a senior military delegation have been taking part in the drill.
While Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry and pro-government media only reported that the exercise would take place in ‘liberated territories’ — a loose term used to describe any territory that came under Azerbaijan’s control since the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 — the Tehran Times wrote that they were taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pictures shared from the exercise by the Defence Ministry show two military officers, likely Azerbaijani and Iranian, saluting a monument depicting a raised fist.
The monument is likely located in Hadrut — a press release by the Defence Ministry in December 2021 showed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attending the opening ceremony of a military unit in Hadrut featuring this same sculpture. According to pro-government news outlet Azvision, the monument, named the Iron Fist, was erected in Hadrut in June 2021.
The joint military exercise between Azerbaijan and Iran took place despite uneasy relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are further compounded by the presence of a significant minority of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran, as well as larger geopolitical factors such as Azerbaijan’s close ties with Israel and Iran’s warm relations with Armenia.
Nate Ostiller
