Vardan Voskanyan, an Armenian expert on Iran and head of the Chair of Iranian Studies at the Yerevan State University (YSU), believes Armenia must get ready for a new clash with Azerbaijan, calling it “inevitable”.

“For years, attempts have been made to convince us that peaceful coexistence with the enemy is possible according to a conventionally very simplified formula, “Let’s concede this and peace will come”. In fact, this is a delusion stemming from improper knowledge about the enemy, an illusion of settling down in a comfort zone that does not exist in Advanced Asia, the vanity of which we see almost every single day,” he wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

“Unfortunately, even after colossal losses, we as a nation and a state do not want to realize that such a comfort zone in the region, where the sacred land of our ancestors is located, has never existed in the long run, does not exist now and will not exist in the foreseeable future.

“Thus, it is necessary to prepare not for some stillborn ‘era of peace’, but for the inevitable next clash with the enemy, and the first step to be ready for it and to succeed is to brace ourselves for the inevitability of such a confrontation, rather than to stick to the unrealistic and destructive approach ‘concessions in exchange for peace’,” Voskanyan stated.