BAKU, March 7 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan said it had prevented several acts of “terrorist” sabotage planned by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including a plot to attack a major oil pipeline running through the South Caucasus to Turkey.
The targets included the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan, an Ashkenazi synagogue, and a leader an ancient Jewish community in Azerbaijan called the Mountain Jews, according to a State Security Service statement cited by the Azertag state news agency late on Friday.
Iran has not commented on the statement.
The BTC pipeline travels via Georgia and Turkey and sends oil to Europe, and also accounts for roughly a third of Israeli oil imports. Any damage to its infrastructure could drive global energy prices even higher as the war in the Middle East enters its second week.
The Azerbaijani statement came just a day after Baku vowed to retaliate for what it said was an incursion of four Iranian drones into its Nakhchivan exclave, which injured four people and damaged airport infrastructure. Iran flatly denied it sent the drones into Azerbaijan.
Baku said an investigation found two Iranian citizens and an Azerbaijani national had colluded to bring over seven kilograms of the C-4 explosive into Azerbaijan on the instructions of the IRGC. Authorities have issued international arrest warrants for four people.
On Friday Azerbaijan ordered the evacuation of its diplomats from Iran, citing safety concerns, amid already tense relations between the two countries over Baku’s ties to Israel and Turkey.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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