Azerbaijan’s president calls Iranian drone strikes ‘act of terror’ as Tehran denies responsibility

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev denounced the Iranian drone strikes on his country’s Nakhchivan region as an “act of terror” on Thursday afternoon and demanded an immediate explanation from Tehran.

Aliyev’s speech, which was shared by the Azerbaijani government, followed a school and an airport terminal in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an Azerbaijani exclave that borders Iran, being struck by Iranian Shahed-type drones earlier on Thursday.

Addressing an emergency meeting of his security council in Baku, Aliyev said that “the state of Azerbaijan vehemently condemns this ugly act of terror, and those who committed it must be immediately held accountable.”

“Iranian officials must provide an explanation to the Azerbaijani side, [and] an apology must be offered,” he continued. “The people of Azerbaijan must be confident that any evil force will have to face our iron fist.”

However, Iranian officials have denied all involvement in the strikes on Azerbaijan, claiming that the drones were launched by Israel in a deliberate attempt to implicate Tehran, according to Iran's Tasnim News Agency.

“These actions by the [so-called] Zionist regime are aimed at disrupting relations between Muslim countries in various ways," the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces was cited as saying.

Baku’s relationship with Tehran has long been strained over fears of Islamist extremist influence, as well as demographic concerns on both sides. Only a third of ethnic Azerbaijanis live in Azerbaijan itself, with the remaining two-thirds living across the border in northwestern Iran.

Azerbaijan has historically been one of Israel’s closest allies in the Middle East, in part due to the countries’ shared attitude toward Iran. The only Muslim-majority nation to publicly support Israel in its ongoing war in Gaza, Azerbaijan has maintained a strategic partnership with Israel since at least 2011, including multi-billion-dollar arms imports.

Though the Shahed-type drones used in Thursday’s strike on Azerbaijan were originally manufactured in Iran, the technology has been shared with Russia since 2022 for use in its war against Ukraine. The US is also reported to have its own Shahed clone, known as LUCAS, which it has deployed against Iranian targets in its current aerial campaign.