Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called his counterpart in neighboring Azerbaijan on Thursday and expressed regret for drone strikes that injured two people earlier in the day, but he denied the drones were part of Iran’s widespread retaliatory attacks and blamed them on Israel.Â
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev accused Iran of “a groundless act of terror and aggression” with the strikes, which struck an airport and near a school earlier in the day, wounding two people, according to the Azerbaijani foreign ministry.
Aliyev said he’d ordered the Azerbaijani military to prepare and take retaliatory measures.
Araghchi told Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov that Tehran wished to expand relations with its neighbor “in all fields” during their phone call, according to a statement from the Iranian foreign ministry.
Referring to the explosions in Azerbaijan, Araghchi “denied any launching of projectiles toward that republic from Iran and stated that the Iranian armed forces are conducting the necessary investigations in this regard. He particularly pointed to the role of the Israeli regime in such attacks to mislead public opinion and undermine Iran’s good relations with its neighbors, noting that other similar incidents have occurred in recent days,” according to Tehran’s readout of the call.
Araghchi has said repeatedly that Iran is only targeting U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East, but it has infuriated many of its neighbors this week, including Gulf states that had maintained close ties and helped facilitate negotiations with the U.S., with a seemingly indiscriminate and deadly barrage of missiles and drones.
Azerbaijan closed part of its southern airspace later Thursday, along its shared border with Iran, and said it would remain off limits to aircraft for at least 12 hours.