Iran's territorial claims please Azerbaijan

By World Bulletin

A member of Azerbaijan's ruling political party has reacted gleefully to calls from Iranian lawmakers for the renegotiation of the 19th-century treaty that created the border between their countries.
Iranian state media suggest that renegotiating the 185-year-old Treaty of Turkmenchay would lead to the annexation of southern Azerbaijan by Tehran.
But Siyavush Novruzov, deputy executive secretary of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party in Baku, says any renegotiation of the treaty would force Tehran to cede territory in northwestern Iran to Azerbaijan.
The Treaty of Turkmenchay was negotiated in 1828 after Persian forces were defeated by the tsar's army in the Russo-Persian War.
Having lost the war, the Persians were forced to recognize Russian control over what is now Armenia and Azerbaijan.
After Iran’s request to renegotiate the 19th-century Treaty of Turkmenchay, Azerbaijan has responded that renegotiation would force Tehran to cede territory in northwestern Iran to Azerbaijan.

The Treaty of Turkmenchay established the Aras River as the common boundary between tsarist Russia and the Persian Empire, ruled at the time by the Qajar dynasty.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that demarcation line became the border between Iran and the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Iranian lawmakers say the treaty was valid for only 100 years and argue that “re-annexing” the cities is in order, according to Iranian press.

Politicians in Baku were quick to counter that it is actually Iran that needs to hand over a chunk of its territory to Azerbaijan -- specifically, the northwestern border areas whose primarily ethnic Azeri residents make up about a quarter of Iran's population of roughly 74.8 million.