(Bloomberg) -- Azerbaijan’s army held air-defense drills just days after its southern neighbor Iran conducted naval tests near their shared border.
Air defense systems including long-range S-300 were activated to practice defending important facilities against missile attacks from a “conditional enemy,” the Defense Ministry in Baku said Saturday on its website.
The drills came a few days after the Iranian Navy conducted exercises in the Caspian Sea, in an area close to the border with Azerbaijan, a close ally of Israel. Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran, which had been closed since January 2023 due to a gunman attack, reopened last month.
Azerbaijan saw its relations with Iran deteriorate after a 2020 war with Armenia over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani army, equipped with high-tech Israeli and Turkish weapons, took back control of the region that had broken free of Baku’s control after the breakup of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
The government in Baku this week dismissed foreign media reports alleging Israeli military presence in the country. The nation’s Foreign Ministry and the office of the Azerbaijani president didn’t immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
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