TEHRAN- The Republic of Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Tehran Ali Alizadeh on Thursday was summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry in protest to the ongoing defamation campaign against the Islamic Republic by Azeri authorities and media outlets.

The Iranian foreign minister's aide and director general of the Eurasia Department at the Foreign Ministry conveyed to the Azeri ambassador the Islamic Republic’s strong dissatisfaction with "unfriendly" statements by high-ranking Azeri officials and misinformation about Iran in the country's media.

"We anticipate that this behavior will halt as soon as possible and that the required steps will be taken to prevent its repeat,” the assistant to the Iranian foreign minister told the Azeri envoy. 

Ambassador Alizadeh, for his part, expressed remorse over the circumstance and promised to swiftly transmit the Islamic Republic’s outrage to Baku.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday denounced the recent drill by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in the northwestern border regions. 

The exercise, known as the IRGC Ground Force's Authority drill, was conducted in the Aras region, along the country's northwestern borders that included the northern portions of Ardabil and East Azarbaijan provinces.

Aliyev has also complained that Tehran has been overly supportive of Yerevan in recent back-to-back talks between Iranian and Armenian officials.

This happened amid ongoing tensions between Armenia and its estranged neighbor Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory. 

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally acknowledged as part of Azerbaijan, yet it is mostly inhabited by ethnic Armenians.

In September, simmering hostilities between the estranged neighbors led to a new outbreak of violence over the region, which resulted in the deaths of almost 100 troops on both sides. Armenia and Azerbaijan traded blame for triggering the fighting. It was the most recent flare-up of hostilities between the two Caucasus countries since a 44-day conflict over the region that concluded in November 2020 and claimed hundreds of lives.

The need for a peaceful resolution of the issue and the two neighbors' respect for one another's territorial integrity have both been emphasized repeatedly by the Islamic Republic.