A senior Iranian lawmaker said on Monday that Israeli drones entered Iran’s airspace from neighboring Azerbaijan during the recent 12-day conflict with Israel, reviving tensions between Tehran and Baku over alleged cooperation with Israel.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Iranian border guards reported seeing drones crossing from Azerbaijani territory.
“Border guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran explicitly said that the Zionist regime used Azerbaijan’s border to infiltrate drones into Iran,” Azizi during an interview with state media.
He added that the matter had been raised by Iran’s presidency and foreign ministry with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had requested documentation.
“Now, whether we provide documents is one issue, but the reality itself is undeniable. Our border guards clearly said: ‘We were there and with our own eyes we saw that Israeli drones entered Iran from Azerbaijani soil,’” Azizi said.
The comments follow a phone call in late June in which Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian urged Aliyev to investigate reports that Israeli drones and micro-UAVs had entered Iran from Azerbaijan during the conflict.
According to Iran’s readout of the call, Aliyev denied that Azerbaijan had allowed its territory to be used in attacks against Iran, describing such actions as a “red line.”
Iran has long voiced unease about what it sees as Israel’s security and intelligence presence in Azerbaijan.
In February, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said countries “should take their neighbors’ sensitivities into consideration,” expressing concern over Israel’s activities in the South Caucasus state.
Azerbaijan, for its part, has consistently rejected allegations of hosting Israeli military bases or permitting its territory to be used against Iran. Its officials have occasionally accused Iranian clerics and state-linked media of spreading inflammatory rhetoric.
In January, Azerbaijan summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baku to protest alleged anti-Azerbaijan content in Iranian outlets.
Despite recurring flare-ups, Tehran and Baku have maintained cooperation in areas such as cross-border trade, energy swaps, and infrastructure projects, including the Rasht-Astara railway.
But mistrust persists, particularly over the Zangezur Corridor linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan through Armenian territory, a project Iran fears could undermine its regional influence.
A US-brokered peace deal last month between Armenia and Azerbaijan granted Washington leasing rights to develop the Zangezur transit corridor, now renamed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
While Iranian officials continue to accuse Baku of tacit collaboration with Israel, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Israel said in 2023 that his country “would not let Israel’s military use Azerbaijan as a base for a possible attack against Iran.”
