Author: David Nargizian

TEHRAN – The Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, will pay a visit to Iran on Sunday to meet his Iranian counterpart.

“On April 9, the Secretary of the Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, will be in Tehran on a working visit,” the Security Council of Armenia said in short statement on Friday. 

According to the statement, “He will meet with Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The visit comes after Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ali Bagheri Kani paid a visit to Yerevan amid rising tensions in the South Caucasus region. Bagheri Kani’s visit was done at the invitation of his Armenian counterpart.

Iran has recently appointed a seasoned diplomat as its new ambassador to Armenia. The public relations office of the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Iran’s Ambassador to Syria Mehdi Sobhani will be dispatched to Yerevan, as Iran’s new envoy, after serving in the Middle Eastern country. 

Sobhani is a seasoned diplomat, according to the Iranian foreign ministry. 

Tensions have been on the rise in the South Caucasus region over a range of issues including military frictions between Yerevan and Baku. Also, Azerbaijan’s decision to open an embassy in Tel Aviv has exacerbated tensions between Tehran and Baku. In addition, in recent days, the Republic of Azerbaijan has taken a set of measures that heightened tensions with Iran. In its latest move, Azerbaijan declared four Iranian diplomats in Baku as persona non grata.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani demanded explanations from Azerbaijan regarding remarks by Israel’s foreign minister that Tel Aviv and Baku have formed a united front with Azerbaijan against Iran. 

Kanaani described the remarks as yet another piece of evidence proving the Zionist regime’s evil intentions to turn the Republic of Azerbaijan’s territory into a threat against the national security of Iran. He strongly condemned the statements, according to a statement by the Iranian foreign ministry. 

Kanaani described the statements of the Zionist regime’s foreign minister regarding the formation of a “united anti-Iranian front,” as well as the statements of the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan regarding the content of the talks and a “new stage of strategic partnership” between Azerbaijan and the Zionist regime as an implicit approval of the anti-Iran orientation of their cooperation, demanding an explanation from the Azeri authorities in this regard.

Emphasizing the unbreakable historical and religious bonds between the people of Iran and Azerbaijan, he added that Iran has always tried to thwart the attempts of ill-wishers to divide the two neighboring countries, and that the government of Azerbaijan is also expected to avoid the trap that the enemies of relations between the two countries have set.

Azerbaijan’s armed forces have cut off a road that Armenians had been using to circumvent a blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, further tightening the screws on the territory’s population.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced on March 25 that its units had taken “necessary local control measures” to cut off a rough dirt road that passed slightly to the north of the main road connecting Karabakh to Armenia, known as the Lachin Corridor. The move was confirmed by the local authorities in Karabakh as well as by the Russian peacekeeping mission, which is supposed to provide security for the corridor.

The Azerbaijani advance, which seems to have taken place without any shots being fired, even prompted a rare criticism from the peacekeepers, who said that they had asked the Azerbaijanis to withdraw from the new positions they had taken.

This alternative road had been used as a means of bypassing the section of the Lachin Corridor, near the city of Shusha, that has been blocked by Azerbaijani government-backed environmental protesters since early December. 

The Azerbaijani government had been calling attention to the bypass road in recent weeks, claiming that Armenians had been using it to transport weapons from Armenia to Karabakh in contravention of the ceasefire agreement that ended the 2020 war between the two sides. 

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that “over the past few days” it had observed the “intensification” of work on the road. 

Officials in the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic denied that the road was being used to transport weapons. “The Azerbaijani side is trying to justify its illegal actions and provocations with fabricated statements that have nothing to do with reality,” the territory’s de facto foreign ministry said in a statement.

Officials said that the road was being improved in order to provide some access to the outside world, as well as to a handful of villages in Karabakh that had also been cut off as a result of the blockade. 

“They want to block this road, too, in order to tighten the blockade and exclude any kind of communication with our stuck villages and outside world,” Artak Beglaryan, an adviser to the state minister in the de facto government, told Eurasianet. “We even tried to make some minor improvements on certain parts of the road to make it more accessible, but they several times threatened to attack the engineering machines working there.”

A statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani units had “crossed the line of contact in the Shusha region, occupying a height marked at 2,054 meters altitude 2.9 kilometers northeast of Saribaba mountain and started engineering work on a post” there. 

The Russian statement said Azerbaijan’s troop movement amounted to a “violation” of the first point of the 2020 ceasefire agreement, under which the two conflicting sides agreed to “stop in their current positions.” The Russian statement also called on Azerbaijan to “cease the engineering work and to withdraw their forces to their previous positions.”

Later, the de facto authorities reported that Russian peacekeepers had “positioned themselves” on the same height that the Azerbaijani forces had taken. They said the Russians were “controlling” the height and “negotiating with the Azerbaijani side to ensure their retreat.” There was no confirmation of that from either the Russian or Azerbaijani side.

“We expect that the Russian peacekeeping forces will take practical steps to eliminate the consequences of Azerbaijan’s repeated violation of” the ceasefire, “as well as to prevent any new possible violations,” the Karabakh foreign ministry statement said.

The bypass road starts in Stepanakert and joins the main Lachin Corridor roughly in the middle, at the village of Lisagor, which Azerbaijanis call Turşsu. It had been rarely used before the launch of the blockade; it is mountainous and in rough condition, passable only by four-wheel-drive vehicles. It more than triples the travel time, Beglaryan said.

“Traffic was quite limited, only a few cars per day,” he said. “However, even in that case that road is quite vital for us to use in case of urgent necessity.”

Beglaryan, who recently announced that he was able to return home after being caught in Armenia when the blockade was launched, declined to say if this was the route he was able to take home. He said he was able to make it back via “the ordinary mechanisms of family reunification.”

Azerbaijan has been building the case for weeks that the Armenians’ use of the road would necessitate some kind of action on its part. This appears only to have been a first step, however, as officials reiterated their demand that they be allowed to set up a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor.

“The recent provocations by Armenia demonstrate that in order to prevent illegal activities in the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan, it is necessary to establish a border control checkpoint between Azerbaijan and Armenia at the end point of the Lachin road,” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the taking of the height on the road. 

While this will restrict traffic between Armenia and Karabakh, it won’t shut it down completely. The Russian peacekeepers have been running what appears to be a large-scale blockade-busting operation, according to a remarkable report in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

According to the newspaper, Russian peacekeepers stationed in the Armenian city of Goris, near the start of the Lachin Corridor, can arrange passage to civilians through the blockade for prices up to $1,000 a person. 

Food, too, is getting through, also thanks to the Russian peacekeepers. The Novaya Gazeta report cited several sources matter-of-factly speaking about the scheme. 

“Food is being delivered, more or less,” one resident told the newspaper. “It’s just that the prices have skyrocketed because it’s very expensive to deliver stuff here. They have to pay several thousand dollars for every vehicle. Then suddenly something new arrives in the shops and we find out that the Russian peacekeepers are responsible for the delivery. They’re allowed to cross over, the “ecologists” let them through. So [the Russian peacekeepers] deliver food here in their cars. You know, those white trucks. Humanitarian aid? They probably do give out something for free as humanitarian aid, but most of it goes to the shops. Ask any vendor why it’s so expensive, all of them will explain — because the peacekeepers ask for several thousand dollars for every vehicle.”

The Turkey factor

The action happened to take place just as Armenia and Turkey, which are in the process of normalizing relations, were making steps toward improving relations. On March 24, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan announced that the land border with Turkey would be open to diplomats and third-country nationals “by the beginning of tourism season.” That plan has long been in the works, but was derailed by the spike in Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions following last September’s Azerbaijani offensive against Armenia. 

Azerbaijan has long sought to link the Turkey-Armenia normalization process with its own efforts to sign a peace deal with Armenia that would cement Baku’s control over Karabakh. Armenia, conversely, has tried to decouple the processes. Turkey’s position has been more ambiguous, but advances in Turkey-Armenia relations have in the past been met with Azerbaijani pushback. When Armenia and Turkey announced last summer that they were planning to open their border, Azerbaijan announced the same day that it was closing its land border with Turkey. It cited Covid as the reason, which few took at face value. 

Azerbaijan’s taking of the road also took place a few hours before a European soccer championship qualifying match between Turkey and Armenia in Yerevan. The last match between the two countries was in World Cup qualifying in 2008, when Yerevan and Ankara were also trying to normalize relations; that effort ultimately was scuttled by Azerbaijan. 

In this year’s match, Armenia scored first. The website Caliber.az, associated with Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry, wrote on its Telegram channel: “The Armenian team opened the scoring in the match with Turkey. The ancient and wise people in their moment of joy forgot about what was happening in Karabakh. If our brother Turks let in one more goal, then we can take Khankendi,” the Azerbaijani name for Stepanakert. Turkey eventually came back, winning 2:1. 

Karine Hajian brings homey Eastern European dishes to a small neighborhood deli in Los Alamitos

Upon entering the deli, customers are transported to Eastern Europe: The shop’s walls are lined with jams, pickles, and candies from Armenia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, while a freezer next to the register is stocked with frozen pelmeni dumplings. Hajian begins daily preparations at the restaurant as early as 6 a.m. to ensure the deli case is fully stocked with soups, salads, and cabbage rolls before the doors open at 11 a.m. “We don’t have a lot of fridge or freezer space, so almost everything gets made daily,” she says. “I’m definitely not bored anymore.”

Hajian operates the takeout restaurant primarily alone, with occasional support from her husband and son. “Coming from years spent as a nurse, I was prepared for hard work,” says Hajian. “When we opened, we had no chef, no dishwasher — I was, and mostly still am doing it all myself, with one additional hired staff member.”

Growing up in Soviet Armenia until she immigrated to the United States in 1973, Hajian learned to cook with her Azerbaijan-born grandmother. She developed the recipes that would later make up the menu for Borsh Deli during those early years, perfecting her cabbage roll wrapping and piroshki bun stuffing over another 50 years of cooking for her own family, which includes two children and two grandchildren. “The food I made for my children was the food I ate as a child,” she says. “Now, it is the same food I get to share with my community.”

Hajian describes the food at Borsh Deli as “cold country fare” — hearty, filling, and true to her Armenian upbringing. “Cooking, for me, is a story,” she says. “It’s not just the dish itself, but the entire process of making it. The ingredients, the techniques, and even the pots and pans.”

Hajian’s cabbage rolls begin with green cabbage leaves that are steamed until tender and delicately wrapped around a filling of ground beef, rice, and fresh parsley. The sizable rolls — one is considered a full serving — are then simmered in a tomato sauce for hours until cooked through; a heavy ceramic plate assures that the rolls are fully submerged during the process. Cutting into a fresh cabbage roll brings a cloud of steam, which reveals a juicy meat and rice filling that spills out of the tomato-scented cabbage leaf. “It’s very labor-intensive work, but one that brings me home,” Hajian says.

Hajian’s signature dish is her cold beet borscht, which begins with a beef bone broth that is made a day in advance. Once the stock has enough flavor, red beets, cabbage, kale, celery, carrot, onion, and handfuls of fresh dill are added in. Each order of borscht is served with a side of sour cream, which Hajian suggests putting on top of the soup to contrast the beets’ sweetness. A vegetable-based stock is available for vegan and vegetarian customers.

Aside from classic Eastern European dishes like cabbage rolls, stalichni salad (potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and dill), and beef stroganoff, Hajian also serves dishes that George, who is from Lebanon, grew up eating.

“I wanted to put hummus on the menu, but my husband requested his mother’s tabbouleh,” she says. Having never made tabbouleh before, Hajian learned from friends and family what size bulgur to use, how much parsley to include (“more than you’d expect”), and, per George, the necessary addition of cucumber. Both George and Karine grew up eating stuffed grape leaves (dolmas), as it is a part of both Lebanese and Armenian cuisines. The dolmas at Borsh Deli include a touch of pomegranate molasses for a slight sweet-and-sour taste. Most days, George sits in the corner of the deli eating a lunch of tabbouleh and fried chicken cutlet.

The warmth emanating from Borsh Deli can be felt in more than just the cooking. Whether it’s locals stopping by to get a familiar taste of home or curious newcomers trying borscht for the first time, Karine, George, or her son Ari greets every customer with a smile, hug, and oversized plate of food. “My family has been a part of the Los Alamitos/Long Beach community for years,” says Karine. “Now I can share our food with the community, too.”

Borsh Deli is located at 10897 Los Alamitos Boulevard in Los Alamitos and is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

https://la.eater.com/2023/3/15/23631513/borsh-deli-los-alamitos-eastern-european-food-soviet-armenian-cuisine-restauarnt