The Embassy of Azerbaijan resumed work today - after more than a year of negotiations between the two countries to reduce the tensions that have arisen, the Associated Press reported, citing media.
An embassy official told the AP on condition of anonymity that it has resumed operations, but the official announcement of the reopening of Azerbaijan's diplomatic mission in Tehran by Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is awaited.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said that the country's embassy has resumed work at a new address in the Iranian capital, Tehran, the Azerbaijani website News.az reported. According to the information, this was reached after negotiations between the governments of the two countries.
Relations between Tehran and Baku have soured since a gunman stormed Azerbaijan's embassy in Iran in January last year, killing its head of security and wounding two guards. Iran announced that the attack had a personal motive because the attacker's wife had disappeared after visiting the embassy.
The President of Azerbaijan, Ilhan Aliyev, however, called what happened a "terrorist attack". Baku has accused Tehran of supporting hard-line Islamists who are trying to topple the government in Azerbaijan. Iran has rejected these claims.
Azerbaijan extradited four Iranian diplomats in April 2023, and a month later expelled the same number of employees of the Azerbaijani mission in Tehran. Azerbaijan is Iran's northwestern neighbor, having been under Iranian rule until the early 19th century. 12 million ethnic Armenians now live on the territory of Iran, representing the largest minority in the country.
Relations between the two countries improved under the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in May this year.