By Ayya Lmahamad
Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva has said that the Iranian Foreign Ministry does not stop its smear campaign against Azerbaijan.
She made the remarks while commenting on Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian's interview with the Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian Foreign Ministry does not stop its smear campaign against Azerbaijan. We strongly reject such accusations,” she said.
The spokesperson underlined that during the 44-day war, Azerbaijan stated and now stresses once again that there were no terrorists on the country’s territory. She underlined that on the territory of Azerbaijan, as a country that suffered from terror, "there has never been a place for terrorists".
“Azerbaijan liberated its lands from occupation at the cost of the blood and lives of its martyrs. As President Ilham Aliyev noted, Azerbaijan, which has over 100,000-member army, does not need mercenaries,” she said.
Abdullayeva stressed the fact that Iran had not made similar accusations during the war, and there was no reason for concern until, after the war, the new government came to power.
"Reasons for these baseless accusations are the prevention of the illegal entry of Iranian trucks into Azerbaijan’s territory and the liberation of Azerbaijan’s lands from occupation. Our advice to those who want to look for terrorists is to carefully look around themselves,” she stated.
It should be noted that last October, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry provided the diplomatic corps in the country, including the Iranian embassy, with information about the participation of Armenian mercenaries in combat operations in the country’s formerly occupied territories.
Iran's very inadequate behavior, illegal transportation of goods to Azerbaijan's Khankandi without Baku's consent, its description of Armenia as a "brotherly and friendly country", the conduct of drills along the border with Azerbaijan, the closure of its airspace to planes carrying military supplies to Nakhchivan, in the past couple of weeks has flared up tension in its relations with neighbor Azerbaijan.
It is noteworthy that Iran's state circles, officials, MPs, and the media still continue their aggressive rhetoric against Azerbaijan, claiming about an alleged Israeli presence near its border, which Baku officially dismissed as unfounded.