Last week, the Turkish-language 7sabah.com.tr news portal, known for its closeness to Iran, published a news article titled "US politician: Aliyev allowed Israel to use Azerbaijan to attack Iran." It was mentioned in the news that Eliot Engel, the pioneer of anti-Turkey bills in the House of Representatives of the US Congress and known for his support to FETÖ, spoke about the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. Engel said in his speech that Aliyev allowed Israel to use Azerbaijan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. It is noted in the news that Azerbaijan has recently appointed an ambassador to Israel. Opposing the deepening of relations between the Zionist aggressor Israel and Azerbaijan, Iran has announced that Mossad agents who infiltrated the border of Azerbaijan have committed conspiracies in Iran.

Armenian and Russian news portals shared this information. Eadaily news portal, news.am and other sites, whose editor-in-chief and the majority of the editorial staff are Armenian, are among those who present this news.

Faktyoxla Lab. has investigated whether this claim is true or not.

Where was this information first released? While researching this information, we discovered that the Armenian site news.am refers to a source called "Sepahi-Pasdaran". Those who are aware of the matter surely know that the official name of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps in Persian is "Sepah Pasdaran Enghelab Eslami." It turned out that it was the Russian-language channel of SEPAH that first disseminated the information (March 1, 2023).

It turns out that the video of that speech was first released in October 2021 on social media through accounts controlled by Iran. So, a user named Arya with an image of the Iranian flag next to his name, a user named Avais (اويس), the official Twitter page of the Indian news portal "News Istaan", a user named Hennah Khan Afridi from Pakistan, shared this video on October 1-5, 2021. That is, this information is not new.

But what time is the first source of the news?

During our research, it was revealed that this news was taken from the speech of congressman Eliot Engel, the leading Democrat member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress, at the hearing on "Iran's influence in the South Caucasus and the surrounding region" held at the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives on December 5, 2012. To be more precise, it was taken from the video made by taking out of context and distorting what the congressman said about Azerbaijan-Israel relations. We found the transcript of that event on the official website of the US House Foreign Relations Committee, and it turned out that Eliot Engel said the following in his speech:

"I wanted just to ask anyone who can answer just one question. It involves the relationship with Azerbaijan and Israel. There had been reports, I guess it must have been 6 or—6 months ago to a year, I guess, where there was talk that Azerbaijan had agreed to let Israel use its bases in case Israel felt it had to make a strike on Iran to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. There seemed to be, whether it was our State Department or someone somewhere, went public on it. And it seemed to me that it undermined any kind of deal that Azerbaijan and Israel have had. I am wondering if any of you can shed some light on that for me and, you know, just tell me your thoughts."

Brenda Shaffer, former research director of the Caspian Studies Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the Foreign Policy Section of the American Political Science Association, answered this question. She said that this information is not actually related to Azerbaijan and Israel. "I think we should be very careful when making such claims. We do not know who is behind these articles and why these claims are made. If one of my students wrote an article with an anonymous source, believe me, I would not give them a good grade."

Materials on the subject were also published in the Azerbaijani media at that time. Thus, in the article published in "Azerbaijan" newspaper, the participants of the "Panel discussions" answered a number of questions of the sub-committee members in the later part of the discussion. Congressman Eliot Engel (New York State) asked a question about the information in the American media that Azerbaijan allegedly allowed Israel to use the military bases on its territory against Iran. In response to this question, Dr. Shaffer stated that such baseless statements refer to unknown sources and are nothing more than disinformation.

On the other hand, Eliot Engel lost his seat in Congress after the 2020 elections. The 16-year congressman was defeated by high school principal Jamaal Bowman. That is, Eliot Engel being presented as a member of the House of Representatives is another argument confirming that this news is fake.

Result

- The article on news portals titled "US politician: Aliyev allowed Israel to use Azerbaijan to attack Iran" is not new; it was taken from the hearings held on December 5, 2012 in the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives on the topic "Iran's influence in the South Caucasus and the surrounding region".

- The opinions mentioned in the article are a distorted form of the words of Congressman Eliot Engel, a former member of the US Congress Foreign Affairs Committee, who spoke at the hearing.

- The information in that article about permission for Israel to use the military bases on the territory of Azerbaijan against Iran has no basis; it is misinformation.

- Rebroadcasting of the video in the news in 2021 and last week is entirely provocative.