The embassy of Azerbaijan in Tehran resumed its work on Monday after more than a year of negotiations between the two countries to ease tensions, media reports said.

An official at the embassy told The Associated Press that it had resumed operations but the formal announcement by the Iranian Foreign Ministry was still pending. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t allowed to discuss the matter publicly.

The Azeri website news.az om Monday quoted Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry as saying that its embassy in Iran had started work at a new address in Tehran. The report said that the embassy reopened following negotiations between the two governments.

Relations between Tehran and Baku soured after a gunman in January 2023 stormed Azerbaijan’s Embassy, killing its security chief and wounding two guards.

Iran said the attack was a personal dispute after the gunman’s wife disappeared on a visit to the embassy, but Azeri President Ilham Aliyev called it a “terrorist attack.” Baku accused Tehran of supporting hard-line Islamists who tried to overthrow its government, a charge Tehran denied.

In April 2023, Azerbaijan expelled four Iranian diplomats. A month later, Iran expelled four Azeri diplomats.

Azerbaijan’s decision in March 2023 to open an embassy in Israel, Iran’s archenemy, also contributed to the deterioration in ties.

Azerbaijan borders Iran’s northwest and was part of the Persian Empire until the early 19th century. There are also over 12 million ethnic Azeris in Iran who represent the Islamic Republic’s largest minority group.

The countries’ relations had improved under the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May after inaugurating a dam on the border together with Aliyev. At the ceremony, Raisi said the relationship between Tehran and Baku went beyond neighboring and was “unbreakable.”

In this image from surveillance video aired by Iranian state television, women pull 16-year-old Armita Geravand from a train car on the Tehran Metro in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

An Iranian teenage girl injured weeks ago in a mysterious incident on Tehran’s Metro while not wearing a head scarf has died, Iranian state media reported Saturday.

The death of Armita Geravand comes after her being in a coma for weeks in Tehran and after the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests it sparked.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported her death.

What happened in the few seconds after Armita Geravand entered the train on October 1 remains in question.

Explained | Mahsa Amini and the widespread protests in Iran 

While a friend told Iranian state television that she hit her head on the station’s platform, the soundless footage aired by the broadcaster from outside of the car is blocked by a bystander. Just seconds later, her limp body is carried off.

Geravand’s mother and father appeared in state media footage saying a blood pressure issue, a fall or perhaps both contributed to their daughter’s injury.

Activists abroad have alleged Geravand may have been pushed or attacked because she was not wearing the hijab. They demanded an independent investigation by the United Nations’ fact-finding mission on Iran, citing the theocracy’s use of pressure on victims’ families and state TV’s history of airing hundreds of coerced confessions.

Smoke rises from the Iraqi Kurdistan headquarters of the Kurdish Democratic Birthday party of Iran, later Iran’s Modern Guards’ accident at the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq September 28, 2022.
| Picture Credit score: Reuters

Iran and Iraq have reached an commitment to disarm participants of Iranian Kurdish dissident teams primarily based in northern Iraq and relocate their participants from their wave bases, officers from the 2 nations stated on August 28.

Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for Iran’s Overseas Ministry, stated in a information briefing on August 28 that the Iraqi executive had assuredly “to disarm the armed terrorist groups stationed in Iraq’s territory by September 19, and then, evacuate and transfer them from their military bases to camps designated by the Iraqi government.”

He added that the cut-off date would now not be prolonged and that time family members between the 2 nations are “entirely friendly and warm … the presence of terrorists in the northern region of Iraq is an unpleasant stain on mutual ties.”

Iran has periodically introduced moves focused on participants of the Kurdistan Democratic Birthday party in Iran, or KDPI, and alternative Iranian Kurdish dissident teams primarily based in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish area akin the border with Iran.

An Iraqi executive reliable, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of he used to be now not licensed to talk to the media, showed the commitment used to be signed between the 2 nations and stated the central executive in Baghdad is “working as quickly as possible” to relocate the teams with the benevolence of government from the Kurdish regional executive in Irbil and Sulaimaniyah.

He declined to provide the precise location to which the disarmed militants could be moved, however stated it’ll be throughout the Iraqi Kurdish area. He stated they “will have a camp to live in and will be without arms.”

Other Iranian dissident teams in Iraq are aligned with each and every of the 2 primary Iraqi Kurdish events – the Kurdistan Democratic Birthday party, with its seat of energy in Irbil, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan birthday celebration, whose stronghold is in Suleimaniyah – and are at odds with each and every alternative in addition to with Iran.

“Previously Sulaimaniyah would accuse Irbil of working with these groups, and Erbil would accuse Sulaimaniyah of working with them, but as a central government we agreed to relocate them,” the Iraqi reliable stated. “We are trying as hard as possible for this to take place on Sept. 19.”

Iraqi High Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani got here to energy utmost month by the use of a coalition of Iranian-backed events and is clear as near to Iran, despite the fact that he has additionally tried to assemble ties with america and Turkey.