TEHRAN – Iran has reacted to the travel warning issued by the Azerbaijani foreign ministry regarding travel to Iran, saying that the Azerbaijani government should get its citizen scared of Israel, not Iran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Twitter that Azerbaijan’s travel warning was similar to the policy adopted by the Israeli president during his recent visit to Baku.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan has warned against the travel of its citizens to Iran! This is the same policy that the president of the fake, child-killing and occupying Zionist regime took during his recent trip to Baku,” Kanaani said. 

He added, “What should scare the people of Azerbaijan is the Zionist regime, not a civilized and Islamic Iran.”

Kanaani continued, “Our policy is still to cancel visas and open our arms to our Azerbaijani brothers and sisters.”

He concluded, “Continuation of neighborhood policy is our top priority, of course, within the framework of mutual respect and respect for neighborhood customs.”

On Saturday, the foreign ministry of Azerbaijan issued a statement calling on its citizens to refrain from traveling to Iran. “Taking into account the terrorist act committed against the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Islamic Republic of Iran in January this year, and limited diplomatic representation in Iran, the citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan are strongly advised not to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran unless it is necessary, and those who visit are strongly advised to exercise increased caution,” the statement said. “Citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan who are currently in the Islamic Republic of Iran are required to observe safety and security rules.”

Tensions have been incrementally on the rise since January this year after a familial dispute led an Iranian citizen to attack the embassy of Azerbaijan, which called the attack an act of “terrorism” despite the fact the assailant stormed the embassy in search of his missing wife. 

In late May, a visit by the Israeli president to Azerbaijan further inflamed the tensions. Kanaani said the time that Israeli activities in the region are hidden from Iran is over.

“None of the regional movements of the Zionist regime remain hidden from the keen eyes of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Kanaani said on Twitter. “The cobweb is not reliable and the struggle to expand the regional presence will not help to repair the shaky internal foundation of the fake regime.”

He added, “The Zionist regime is hated by the nations of the world and will have no future.”

Kanaani also attached a Quran Surah that says, “They will not fight against you in a body save in fortified towns or from behind walls; their fighting between them is severe, you may think them as one body, and their hearts are disunited; that is because they are a people who have no sense.”

Kanaani did not mention Azerbaijan by name but his tweet highly correlates with the visit Israeli President Isaac Herzog is paying to the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan.