Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said it would vacate the diplomatic post, accusing Iran of not taking seriously reported threats against it in the past including inflammatory comments in hard-line media about diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Israel.
Tehran’s police chief, General Hossein Rahimi, initially blamed the attack on “personal and family problems”, something quickly repeated across Iranian state media. But within hours, Rahimi lost his position as police chief after a video emerged showing a member of the security force apparently doing nothing to stop the attack.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “In the past, there were attempts to threaten our diplomatic mission in Iran, and it was constantly raised before Iran to take measures to prevent such cases, and to ensure the safety of our diplomatic missions.”
“Unfortunately, the recent bloody terrorist attack illustrates the disastrous consequences of not showing proper sensitivity to our urgent appeals in this direction.”
“We believe that the recent campaign against Azerbaijan against our country in Iran led to such an attack against our diplomatic mission,” the ministry added.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev described the attack as a “terrorist attack”. He said that the dead security commander was First Lieutenant Orhan Rizvan Oglu Askarov.
“We demand that this terrorist act be quickly investigated and the terrorists punished,” Aliyev said in a statement. “Terrorism against diplomatic missions is unacceptable!”
The attack took place on Friday morning, the second day of the Iranian holiday weekend. Surveillance video released in Azerbaijan allegedly shows the gunman driving up to the embassy, running into the back of another car parked in front. He got out of his car holding what appeared to be a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
From there, details immediately contradict the Iranian account of the attack, according to the Associated Press.
Iranian state television quoted Rahimi as saying the gunman entered the embassy with his two children during the attack.
However, surveillance footage from inside the embassy, which matched post-incident details and bears a timestamp identical to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s statement, showed that the gunman stormed the embassy doors on his own.
Those inside tried to hack metal detectors to hide. The man opened fire with the rifle, muzzle flashing, as he chased the men into the small side office. Another man bursts through a side door and the gunman fights for the gun as the footage ends.
Another surveillance video from outside the embassy, which also corresponds to the same details, showed that the gunman rammed his car into another in front of the embassy. The gunman then got out and handed his gun to someone inside the Iranian police podium, likely a member of the security force, who stood by and did nothing while the man stormed the embassy.
Video footage of the aftermath of the incident showed an empty Diplomatic Police station near the embassy, with a man apparently injured in an SUV parked outside. Inside the embassy in front of a metal detector, medics stood over what appeared to be a lifeless body in a small office as blood pooled on the floor below.
Associated Press journalists later saw the front door of the embassy riddled with bullet holes after the attack.
Azerbaijan lies on the northwestern border of Iran and was a vassal of the Persian Empire until the early 19th century. Ethnic Azeris number more than 12 million people in Iran and represent the largest minority in the Islamic Republic — making maintaining good relations all the more important for Tehran.
There were tensions between the two countries as Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to maintain its 44-kilometre (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan captures new territory through war.