Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev appointed his country's ambassador to Israel today, Wednesday, after 30 years of bilateral relations, amid escalating tension between Azerbaijan and Iran, its great neighbor to the south.
Aliyev signed a presidential decree appointing Mukhtar Mammadov, a veteran official who held positions in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, to be Azerbaijan's first ambassador to Israel.
Israel has had an embassy in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, since the early 1990s, and has been an important military supporter of Azerbaijan in recent years. It has also supported Baku diplomatically in its dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan provides Israel with about 40% of its oil imports, and both President Aliyev and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have praised the strength of relations between the two sides.
In light of the tension between Azerbaijan and Iran due to Baku's relations with Israel, the Azerbaijani parliament passed last November a law paving the way for the opening of the country's first embassy in Israel, and it will be based in Tel Aviv.
Last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian accused Israel of establishing a military presence in Azerbaijan and establishing a secret alliance with it.
Baku rejected these allegations, but Iran organized large-scale military exercises along its border with Azerbaijan, and Aliyev responded by taking pictures of him with Israeli "suicide" drones manufactured in Azerbaijan.