Can someone give us a concise gist version of what issues Iran and Azerbaijan have with each other?
Without flaming of course. I know Azerbaijan-Armenia masla .... just not this.
1. Today there exist 2 Azerbaijans: The original one which is an ancient Province of Iran more than 2,000 years old, and the newly created one called "The Republic of Azerbaijan."
2. Russia seized Iran's northern province about 150 years ago and under Stalin the USSR decided to call that annexed land "Azerbaian" also. Stalin did this under the pretext of "reuniting" these lands, so he could come back and seize more Iranian territory. He tried, and it didn't work: We kicked the USSR troops out of Tabriz.
3. Fearing Iran's ties to the annexed province, Stalin forbid the Persian language in the land he took (Rep. of Azerb.) and starting manufacturing a 'Turkic' identity. (Azaris are bilingual: we speak both Persian and Turkic, the Persian is very old and the Turkic is very new.) He severely punished people that disobeyed and implemented state-run indoctrination programs ("Stalin was the father of many nations," historians often write).
4. The USSR collapses approximately 25- 30 years ago and The Rep. of Azerbaijan breaks away from Russia and the people that come into power in the Rep. of Azerbaijan realize that they can continue to play these language/ethnicity games to cause a separation between the people while they load up their bank accounts with revenue from the oil and gas in the Caspian. Israel starts to help them, and the Rep. of Azerbaijan supplies about 25-30% of Israel's oil while cultivating a bad relationship between Iran and the Rep. of Azerbaijan. To promote this grandiose farce they hire bloggers to spam their absurd propaganda all over the place.
In a nutshell that's the issue.
So now the corrupt Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan (with its billions in oil money) and their Israeli chums pay people to spam garbage like this below:
And they don't like for their citizens to see real maps and facts: