Have Tehran and Baku crossed the Rubicon of tension?

The culmination of the tension in Azerbaijani-Iranian relations can be considered the opening of the Azerbaijani embassy in Israel on March 29, which Tehran considered a forbidden Rubicon for Baku.

It is possible that this is the reason for the increase in tension between Iran and Azerbaijan, which was especially outlined in the second half of last year. Especially when on November 18  the official Baku decided to open the Azerbaijani Embassy in Israel. With anti-Azerbaijani attacks, the Ayatollah regime tried to dissuade Baku from this rash step, from the point of view of Tehran.

However, despite this, Azerbaijan continued to strengthen its long-term tilt towards rapprochement with Israel, activating traditional bilateral relations in the field of security and cooperation in the Caucasus and beyond. In many ways, this was facilitated by the breaking of the anti-Israeli blockade of the Muslim world, which was conducted by four more Arab countries (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan) in 2020 under the "Abraham Agreement", recognizing the state of Israel. The process with Iran's main rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, is developing in this direction.

Iran's internal political crisis, caused formally by the anti-hijab movement, which hides the deep problems of the Iranian clerical system, limiting both the secular rights of citizens and their connection with the hemisphere of Western values, also played a role. The authoritarian regulation of the internal and external life of Iranian society began to fail, and noticeably limited the repressive potential of the regime.

And, of course, in this series of concomitant factors, it is impossible not to mention the Iranian military supplies of "Shahed" drones to Russia for the war in Ukraine, which strengthened Iran's "nuclear" isolation.

As the opening date of the embassy in Tel Aviv approached, the amplitude of tension between the two countries increased. The attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran on January 27 caused a serious crack in bilateral relations. For the first time since the establishment of diplomatic relations in March 1992, Baku withdrew its embassy from Tehran. Subsequently, Iran's demonstration of force at the border, the arrests of Shiite activists after the sudden death of the most revered Baku Shiite preacher Haji Shahin and the assassination attempt in Baku on MP Fazil Gazanfaroglu, known for anti-Iranian attacks, became a coda in the overture of the conflict on the eve of the opening of the embassy. Considering that the assassination attempt on the deputy took place on the day of opening the embassy, official Baku, represented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recognized this as a mark of Iran, openly calling Tehran the author of the assassination attempt.

In this case, when the forbidden Rubicon has been crossed,  the talk  is about Azerbaijani-Iranian relations before and after the opening of the embassy in Tel Aviv. Although after the Foreign Ministries of the two countries continued to exchange mutual accusations of betrayal of the spirit of interstate relations built up over decades, a number of the events listed above may indicate that in the future Tehran will lower the bar for escalating tensions with Baku. Such factors include the expanding breakthrough of the Muslim blockade around Israel, the growing internal anticlerical movement of Iranian society, the increasing isolation of Iran in the region, which, along with Western restrictions, is complemented by the building of allied relations of Arab countries with Israel.

It is noteworthy that the official Iranian news agencies IRNA, “Mehr” quite correctly reported about the opening of the embassy in Tel Aviv, which has not been typical of the regime until now. The public irritation that intensified Tehran's diplomatic controversy with Baku arose later after the statement of Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen at a joint press conference with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov about the need for joint action against hostile Iran. However, as it has happened in the past, the eastern surge of emotions passes as quickly as it occurs.