Azerbaijan Denies Its Airspace Was Used In Attack On Iran Nuclear Site

Radio Farda



July 06, 2020

The Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan on Monday denied allowing another
country – presumably Israel or the United States – to use its airspace
to carry out attacks on Iran.

"Information about Russia's 'Container' radar system detecting unknown
planes using Azerbaijan's air space to carry out attacks on Iran is an
absolute lie," Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said according to
Azerbaijan's International News.

“The dissemination of such information is aimed at undermining the
Azerbaijani-Iranian relations," the Ministry told International News
and declared that the allegations of Azerbaijan's involvement were
disseminated by "pro-Armenian forces" with the aim of damaging the
relations between Iran and Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also stressed that Azerbaijan has
never taken any steps against Iran and will not do so in the future.

The source of the news about detection of foreign planes in
Azerbaijan's airspace is the lesser-known Avia-Pro news website of
Russia. The news website on Monday claimed that the drones that
attacked Iran's military and nuclear sites had been detected by the
Russian Radar system.

In recent days there have been explosions at two of Iran's top
security nuclear and military facilities – Khojir in the east of
Tehran and Natanz in Isfahan province.

Iranian authorities said the incident at the first site was caused by
the explosion of a gas storage tank but have delayed thee announcement
of the cause of the incident at Natanz "for security reasons".

It's been widely suggested that Israeli drone or missile attacks were
responsible for the explosions. Israel has not commented on the issue
but in similar cases, they have neither confirmed nor denied reports
of their involvement.

Azerbaijan and Armenia – which Azerbaijan has accused of slander in
this case – have had a territorial and ethnic conflict over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region for more than three decades. Azerbijan has
close military relations with the United States and Israel.

Iran's relations with Azerbaijan soured during the presidency of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but since President Hassan Rouhani took office
relations have been cordial and the two countries have cooperated on a
number of projects.

In August 2014 after the Revolutionary Guard announced that it had
downed an Israeli drone that attempted to "infiltrate the nuclear zone
of Natanz", the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan refuted the claims that
the drone had been launched from its territory.

However, a few days after the incident, Brigadier-General Masoud
Jazayeri, Deputy of Iran's Armed Forces Joint Staff, told reporters
that the Israeli drone had flown in from "a country in the north of
Iran" and threatened to disclose the name of the country if that
country did not take action to make compensation.