TEHRAN – Iran announced on Friday that it had expelled four Azerbaijani diplomats in response to a similar move by the South Caucasian nation. 

“Four diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan, who were declared as persona non grata, were expelled from Iran last month,” Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported. 

The Azerbaijani diplomats were serving in Tehran and Tabriz. 

Iran’s move, IRNA said, comes as a response to Azerbaijan’s expulsion of Iranian diplomats nearly a month ago. 

The Azerbaijani foreign ministry confirmed that its diplomats in Iran had been expelled. “The news in the press these days is not new,” Aykhan Hajizada, director of the Press Service Department of Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said, according to Azerbaijani media. 

In early April, Azerbaijan took the controversial step of declaring four Iranian diplomats as persona non grata amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Baku. 

The announcement on the expulsion of Azerbaijani diplomats comes two days after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made controversial remarks on Tehran-Baku relations. 

“Everybody in Iran, all segments of the establishment should finally understand that the language of threats and terror will not work with Azerbaijan. The soon they understand, the better we can see signs of normalization,” Aliyev said during an international gathering in Baku.