During and after the 12-day Iran–Israel war, Iranian propaganda levelled harsh accusations against Azerbaijan, directly blaming its northern neighbor for collaborating with Israel. Some Iranian political commentators including officials and persons affiliated with the IRGC threatened Baku and called for decisive action against Azerbaijan. As the war erupted at a time of relative warming in Azerbaijani-Iranian relations, Tehran has sought to avoid open hostility at the official level, instead projecting goodwill. The result has been an incongruent and contradictory policy approach.
Iranian propaganda against Azerbaijan has focused on two main accusations: that Azerbaijan supported Israel’s attack and that Baku failed to condemn either the Israeli or American strikes on Iran.
One of Iran’s foremost Caucasus and Central Asia experts, Ehsan Movahedian at Allameh Tabataba’i University, claimed in an interview with the Armenian news agency that Israeli drones and F-35 fighter jets entered northern Iran via Azerbaijani airspace. He asserted that Iranian air defense systems detected several drones approaching from the direction of Azerbaijan.
Media outlets affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made similar claims. A Telegram channel linked to the IRGC reported that Israeli drones and aircraft flew through Azerbaijani airspace, and issued a direct threat to Baku, “The Aliyev regime’s collaboration with the Zionists cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Aliyev and the ruling clique in Baku must pay for their crimes against the Iranian people.”
Other media outlets have resurfaced the claim that there are Israeli military bases on Azerbaijani territory, asserting that they are as legitimate a target as Israel itself. Azerbaijan has repeatedly denied the presence of Israeli bases on its territory and Iran has not offered definitive proof to support its allegations.
The conservative publication Vatan Emrooz openly called for the activation of the “Axis of Resistance” in response to the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It emphasized the need to mobilize pro-Iranian forces, not only in Azerbaijan, but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Houthi forces in Yemen.
The Telegram channel Akhbar-e Syria ( Syrian news—a popular telegram channel with more than 20,000 followers that often puts out IRGC viewpoints) went so far as to issue death threats against Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, “The funding of terrorist activity [against Iran] comes from the Baku regime and Ilham Aliyev personally. For this betrayal and crime, the time of his death has come.”
Pro-Russian writer Reza Shaybani also claimed that Israeli Harop strike drones, with a range of 1,000 kilometers, could have reached Tehran and Rasht only from the coastal regions of Azerbaijan. He vowed to take revenge on the “Zionist mercenaries.” Shaybani presents himself as a dentist and writer from Tabriz who studied in Moscow. However, his writing focuses on propaganda against Azerbaijan.
Such threats were not confined to political commentators and the media. Hojjatoleslam Abdolrahim Najafgolizadeh Saraei, the representative of the Supreme Leader in the IRGC’s territorial unit in East Azerbaijan Province, stated that after Iran’s strike on a U.S. base in Qatar, the Islamic Republic is prepared to target American bases in other countries, including Azerbaijan. He also claimed that Israel has built an airbase in Azerbaijan.
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Alex Grinberg is a Senior Fellow at the Turan Research Center, a resident Iran expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, and a research fellow at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
