Victoria Nuland, spokesperson of U.S. Department of State said at April 2 press briefing they “have no information to indicate that reports on alleged Israeli access to airbases in Azerbaijan have any basis in fact.”
“I’m going to send you to the Azerbaijanis for whatever they may be talking to the Israelis about. We don’t have any information to indicate anything new on this front,” Nuland told the journalist who asked her to comment on claims of Israeli access in Azerbaijan airfield.
On March 28, foreignpolicy.com issued an article, which, in particular, said: “Four U.S. senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield, and the airfield is called Azerbaijan," a senior administration official said in early February.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources."
"The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, were all contacted for comment on this story but did not respond. The Azeri embassy to the United States also did not respond to requests for information regarding Azerbaijan's security agreements with Israel,” the article says.
Following the publication of this article, an Azeri spokesman denied that his government had granted Israel access to Azeri airbases.
"This information is absurd and groundless," AFP quoted Azerbaijan's defense ministry spokesman Teymur Abdullayev as saying.
A senior official at Azerbaijan's presidential administration said such speculation was "aimed at damaging relations between Azerbaijan and Iran".
