Khomeini’s portrait said installed near Azerbaijani border

A photo has been circulated in social media showing the portrait of Sayyid Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, installed near the border with Azerbaijan.

The portrait is on a large board across the River Araz – that separates the two countries – and can been seen several kilometers from the Azerbaijani territory.

Khomeini’s portrait is in the Western section of the Azerbaijani-Iranian border that had been under Armenian control until the Second Karabakh War in 2020.

Azerbaijan regained complete control over its borders with Iran in last year’s war by liberating its territories occupied during the war in the early 1990s. It should be noted that the portrait was not present there during the Armenian control of the border.

Khomeini’s “presence” on the border has been widely discussed in the Azerbaijani social media with some netizens describing it as a politically-motivated move.

It is noteworthy that the installation of Khomeini’s portrait follows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Azerbaijan’s Shusha city in Nagorno-Karabakh on June 15.

During the visit, the two countries had signed a memorandum of alliance that covered economic, military and transport spheres and cemented Turkey’s presence in Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus region.