If Iran wanted to strike Azerbaijan, it wouldn’t have missed, Iranian Ambassador to Armenia says
Iran has again denied that it launched drones that struck Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan earlier in March, with Ambassador to Armenia Khalil Shirgholami claiming there would be no reason for such an attack. In an interview with Armenian media on Tuesday, Shirgholami further asserted that if Iran had wanted to strike Azerbaijan, the drones would not have missed.
On 5 March, Azerbaijan said Iranian drones hit the Nakhchivan airport and other nearby sites, injuring four people and damaging buildings in the area.
Azerbaijan reacted forcefully, with President Ilham Aliyev explicitly calling it a ‘terrorist attack’, ordering the mobilisation of the army, and issuing implicit threats, saying ‘those who [tested our strength] in the past had their sculls [sic] crushed with [an] “Iron Fist” and today’s events will lead to the same outcome’.
Since then, however, the temperature has cooled, with Aliyev personally speaking with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, who also denied Tehran’s involvement. Cargo routes, which had been temporarily closed after the attack, have since been reopened.
At the same time, Iranian denials have continued along with Azerbaijani assertions that the drones came from Iran.
Shirgholami’s comments echoed Tehran’s line, while also adding a layer of veiled threat — he also claimed, without citing evidence, that ‘Israel has a security presence in the Republic of Azerbaijan; we know this’.
‘Therefore, this incident was suspicious, and Azerbaijan’s response was disproportionate and unfriendly. Their reactions caused our military command to warn the Republic of Azerbaijan that instead of starting these processes, it should be careful not to let the Israeli regime attack the Islamic Republic of Iran from their territory, because if there is an attack, we will respond without hesitation and with full determination’.
‘The noise [Azerbaijan] raised was completely unfounded and pointless. I believe they themselves noticed that these reactions were inappropriate and are correcting it to some extent’, he added.
Yousef Bardouka
