Azerbaijani security forces arrested two suspects who had planned to murder a senior official in the Muslim country’s Jewish community, Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster reported on Tuesday afternoon.
The report cited sources in the Jewish community as saying that the Islamic Republic of Iran orchestrated the attempted assassination.
The Kan report did not provide further details on the suspects or the attack plans.
Earlier on Tuesday, Jerusalem’s National Security Council (NSC) issued a warning about new Iranian efforts to harm or kidnap Israelis abroad.
The NSC revealed that Iranian operatives recently attempted to target an Israeli businessman by contacting him through Telegram, pretending to be from a Saudi news outlet. They tried to lure him to Dubai to harm him, and sent him malicious links and files to gain access to his phone. The businessman reported the suspicious activity, exposing the plot.
“The NSC emphasizes that this is another manifestation of the ongoing Iranian terror threat against Israelis both domestically and abroad,” according to the government statement.
In 2023, Azerbaijan made history by becoming the first Shi’ite nation to open an embassy in Israel. For Jerusalem, ties with Azerbaijan—which shares a 428-mile border with Iran and supplies an estimated 30% of the Jewish state’s oil—are of strategic importance. At the same time, Azerbaijan is a leading purchaser of Israeli military hardware, which helped lift Baku to victory in its 2020 war with arch-rival Armenia.
The Jewish community of Azerbaijan numbers some 25,000 to 30,000 people, while tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Republic immigrated to Israel and maintain strong ties with the Caucasus nation.
The number of Israeli tourists visiting Azerbaijan has doubled during the war against Hamas in Gaza, according to data published in June.
