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Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran
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Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan Dismisses Claims on Its Airspace Used to Attack Iran

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry on Monday denied allowing another country to use its airspace to carry out attacks on Iran.

"Information about Russia's 'Container' radar system detecting unknown planes using Azerbaijan's airspace to carry out attacks on Iran is an absolute lie," Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said according to Azerbaijan's International News.

“The dissemination of such information is aimed at undermining the Azerbaijani-Iranian relations," the Ministry told International News and declared that the allegations of Azerbaijan's involvement were propagated by "pro-Armenian forces" with the aim of damaging the relations between Iran and Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also stressed that Azerbaijan has never taken any steps against Iran and will not do so in the future.

The source of the news about the detection of foreign planes in Azerbaijan's airspace is the lesser-known Avia-Pro news website of Russia. The news website on Monday claimed that the drones that attacked Iran's military and nuclear sites had been detected by the Russian Radar system.

In recent days there have been explosions at two of Iran's top security nuclear and military facilities – Khojir in the east of Tehran and Natanz in Isfahan province.

Iranian authorities said the incident at the first site was caused by the explosion of a gas storage tank but have delayed the announcement of the cause of the incident at Natanz "for security reasons".

When video footage of the blast surfaced online, the Iranian Defense Ministry quickly rolled out a spokesman to downplay the incident. Davoud Abdi, speaking on state television, dismissed it as a minor blast at a gas-storage facility in a “public area” of the Parchin military complex, outside the Iranian capital.

A well-known former site of nuclear activity, an explosion at the Parchin military complex would undoubtedly have been a serious incident.

Satellite imagery later suggested that the explosion took place at the Hemmat Industrial Complex, east of Tehran and away some 24 km from Parchin.

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Iran Wants Guarantees Trump Will Not Quit a New Nuclear Pact, Iranian Official Says

A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Iran Wants Guarantees Trump Will Not Quit a New Nuclear Pact, Iranian Official Says

A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
A paratrooper carries the Iranian flag during the National Army Day parade ceremony in Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran told the United States in talks last week it was ready to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment but needed watertight guarantees President Donald Trump would not again ditch a nuclear pact, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Friday.

Iran and the United States are set to hold a second round of talks on Saturday in Rome, a week after a first round of negotiations in Oman which both sides described as positive.

Trump, who has restored a "maximum pressure" campaign on Tehran since February, ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers in 2018 during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

In the intervening years, Tehran has steadily overstepped the 2015 agreement's limits on its nuclear program, designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb.

Former US President Joe Biden, whose administration unsuccessfully tried to reinstate the 2015 pact, was not able to meet Tehran's demand for guarantees that no future US administration would renege on it.

Tehran has approached the talks warily, skeptical they could yield a deal and suspicious of Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran if it does not halt its accelerating uranium enrichment program, which Iran says is peaceful.

While both Tehran and Washington have said they are set on pursuing diplomacy, they remain far apart on a dispute that has rumbled on for more than two decades.

Tehran's red lines "mandated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei" could not be compromised in the talks, the official told Reuters, describing Iran's negotiating position on condition of anonymity.

He said those red lines meant Iran would never agree to dismantle its centrifuges for enriching uranium, halt enrichment altogether, or reduce the amount of enriched uranium it stores to a level below the level it agreed in the 2015 deal that Trump abandoned.

It would also not negotiate over its missile program, which Tehran views as outside the scope of any nuclear deal.

"Iran understood in indirect talks in Oman that Washington doesn’t want Iran to stop all nuclear activities, and this can be a common ground for Iran and the US to start a fair negotiation," the source said.

Iran said on Friday reaching a deal with the United States was possible if "they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands".

Top US negotiator Steve Witkoff, in a post on X on Tuesday, said Iran must "stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment" to reach a deal with Washington.

Tehran has said that it is ready to work with the UN nuclear agency, which it sees as "the only acceptable body in this process", to provide assurances that its nuclear work is peaceful, according to the source.

The source said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had told the Americans that, in return for that cooperation, Washington should promptly lift sanctions on Iran's oil and financial sectors.