(Reuters) - Iran hosted talks&nbsp;between&nbsp;the foreign ministers of&nbsp;Armenia&nbsp;and&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;on Monday, saying they offered an opportunity to bring peace to the South Caucasus after Baku's forces last month recaptured the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The two foreign ministers' first meeting since&nbsp;Azerbaijan's lightning offensive also took place against the background of rising tensions in the Middle East.
"A historic opportunity is available to all countries in the region. The&nbsp;war&nbsp;in South Caucasus has ended,&nbsp;and&nbsp;it is time for peace&nbsp;and&nbsp;cooperation," Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a televised statement.
"The presence of outsiders in the region will not only not solve any problems but will also complicate the situation further," he added, without elaborating.
That was an implicit reference to the United States&nbsp;and&nbsp;the European Union, whose involvement in the search for a peace agreement&nbsp;between&nbsp;Armenia&nbsp;and&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;has particularly annoyed&nbsp;Russia.
The talks in Tehran were also attended by the foreign ministers of&nbsp;Russia&nbsp;and&nbsp;of Turkey, a close ally of&nbsp;Azerbaijan.
"Given&nbsp;its&nbsp;strong&nbsp;and&nbsp;influential position, Iran is ready to assist in resolving the existing disputes&nbsp;between&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Armenia," Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said, according to state media, during talks with&nbsp;Armenia's foreign minister.
Russia&nbsp;regards&nbsp;itself&nbsp;as the&nbsp;security&nbsp;guarantor&nbsp;between&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Armenia&nbsp;- both former Soviet republics - but the demands&nbsp;and&nbsp;distractions&nbsp;of&nbsp;its&nbsp;war&nbsp;in&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;have&nbsp;led&nbsp;to a&nbsp;weakening&nbsp;of&nbsp;its&nbsp;influence&nbsp;in the South Caucasus.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in a statement posted on the X social media platform, said Ankara welcomed Monday's talks in Tehran&nbsp;and&nbsp;hoped they would "give impetus to normalisation&nbsp;and&nbsp;peace processes".
Nagorno-Karabakh is viewed internationally as part of&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;but had been controlled&nbsp;by breakaway ethnic&nbsp;Armenians since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
Azerbaijan's recapture of Karabakh has prompted the exodus of most of the region's 120,000 ethnic&nbsp;Armenians. Yerevan has accused Baku of ethnic cleansing, while&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;said the&nbsp;Armenians left of their own accord&nbsp;and&nbsp;were welcome to return.
Christian&nbsp;Armenia&nbsp;and&nbsp;Muslim&nbsp;Azerbaijan&nbsp;have&nbsp;fought two&nbsp;wars in the past three decades&nbsp;and&nbsp;have&nbsp;so far failed&nbsp;to seal a peace deal despite long-running efforts by the United States, EU&nbsp;and&nbsp;Russia.
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(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai&nbsp;and&nbsp;Felix Light in Tbilisi, additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; in Ankara; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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Iran hosts Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, says they offer chance of South Caucasus peace