I must also say that Azerbaijan is Turkic speaking - they are a Turkish race, not a Persian race. So although Azerbaijan and Iran are both largely Shia but obviously their racial differences count more than their religious similarities.
Here is a map of this screwed up part of the Middle East and Central Asia.
These are Iranian numbers which are certainly understated. The real proportion of Azeris in Iran could be higher maybe over 30% of the population. Plus with another over six million Kurds living inside Iran the proportion of Persians inside Iran could be about 60% of the population only.
For the extremely screwed up Middle East these are very dangerous proportions of inherently psychotic races. They will fight each other. Here is some news about simmering tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan:
I have blogged about this once before - that last year (2020) Israel, Pakistan and Turkey had militarily assisted Shia Azerbaijan defeat Christian Armenia in the Nagorno Karabakh war that lasted 44 days. Iran lost much face because Shia Iran was militarily supporting Christian Armenia (against Shia Azerbaijan !!) When Iran and Armenia lost the war, the ethnic Azeris living inside Iran (all 22 million of them) openly celebrated the Azerbaijan victory.
Since then tension has simmered between Iran and Azerbaijan. Iran has used a number of excuses to accuse Azerbaijan of playing the Great Game including the presence of Israeli weapons and also Israeli military advisors in Azerbaijan and Kurdish Iraq. Most certainly the Israeli Mossad and the Israeli airforce (Israeli drones) operate from inside Azerbaijan.
In 2018 when the Israeli Mossad stole the entire archive of the Iranian nuclear program (over 55,000 pages of documents and another 55,000 files on 183 CDs weighing over half a ton) from a warehouse in Teheran they smuggled the entire stolen cache across the 700km long border into Azerbaijan.
What I find interesting is the presence of Pakistani military inside Azerbaijan. Obviously Pakistan is playing the Great Game against Shia Iran. Considering that the Sunni Taliban has acquired control of Afghanistan (on Iran's eastern borders) with Pakistani assistance it is another thorn between Pakistan and Iran.
The entire Iranian mischief making enterprise in the Middle East is being targeted - from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Kurdish Iraq to Azerbaijan (including the 22 million Azeris living inside Iran).
What should we do? It is best that we do not masuk campur. We have to keep our local dunggus from joining ISIS in Khorasan or ISIS-K.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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