Category: 2022

Armenia – Sept 1 2022

Sept 2 2022

A war of words between Azerbaijan and Iran has again heated up, with semi-official sources in Azerbaijan openly calling for Iran’s large ethnic Azerbaijani minority to break free.

“The time has come: Southern Azerbaijan should secede from Iran,” went an August 26 headline on Caliber.az, a website connected to Azerbaijan’s presidential administration. (“Southern Azerbaijan” is the irredentist term for Iran’s Azerbaijani-dominated northern provinces.)

An article the following day in Haqqin.az, a site connected to Azerbaijan’s security services, was headlined “Southern Azerbaijan is striving for independence!” And it suggested that Baku was ready to help the process along: “The Azerbaijani state has enough mobilizing force to defend the rights of its compatriots,” the unidentified author wrote, referring to Iranian Azerbaijanis. “And the Azerbaijani government has enough resources to support a new wave of the national-liberation movement.”

Relations between Baku and Tehran have been rocky since the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. While Iran has repeatedly expressed its support for Azerbaijan regaining control of many of the territories it lost in the first war between the two sides in the 1990s, it appears worried about a now-emboldened Azerbaijan’s potential next steps.

This most recent flare up appears connected to July statements from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he expressed concern about Azerbaijan’s intentions for a new transport link connecting Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan with the Azerbaijani mainland, a route that Baku calls the “Zangezur corridor.” The route will pass along Armenia’s border with Iran, with uncertain consequences for Armenia-Iran commerce.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are currently in negotiations over the precise nature of that route, and the sensitive political question of who will have what kind of control over transit along the route. But Azerbaijan has frequently touted the corridor in pan-Turkic terms (it would allow smoother access from mainland Azerbaijan to Turkey, which borders Nakhchivan), alarming Iran. And Azerbaijan has further threatened that if it doesn’t get what it wants from Armenia, it could take the territory by force.

Iranian officials say they don’t oppose the new route per se. “Iran is not against the creation of the Zangezur corridor,” Iran’s ambassador to Baku, Abbas Mousavi, said on August 28. “It depends on Azerbaijan and Armenia and is an international issue. The principle of our country is that one country cannot influence the national interests of another country, including neighbors.”

But Tehran also has said repeatedly that changing borders in the Caucasus would amount to a “red line.” In a July 19 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Tehran, Khamenei reiterated that concern. “If there is an effort to block the border between Iran and Armenia, the Islamic Republic will oppose it because this border has been a communication route for thousands of years,” he said.

Tehran has been expressing its support for Armenia’s territorial integrity in other ways. Iran announced that it is opening a consulate in the southern Armenian city of Kapan and appointed a consul in August, which was a “clear signal” to Baku, analyst Salar Seifaldini told the Iranian newspaper Donya-e Eqtesadi.

There also has been a recent uptick in anti-Azerbaijan articles in the Iranian press. One newspaper even resurrected a 12-year-old Italian tabloid story claiming that the wife of President Ilham Aliyev was having an affair with the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko.

And on August 24, a Turkish pro-government tabloid printed quotes of what it said was an audio recording of a former senior Iranian diplomat, Ebulfezl Zuhtevend, making various insulting and provocative comments about Azerbaijan. “Azerbaijan is a frightening phenomenon for us. Nakhchivan should be completely annexed to Iran,” he reportedly said. “Armenians are allies of Iran, and it has always been this way throughout history. There is no such thing as Azerbaijan … Azerbaijan should be annexed to Iran again, otherwise it will infect Iran like a cancer cell.”

Tension between Iran and Azerbaijan already has flared on several occasions since 2020. In May, Aliyev got into a public argument with an Iranian analyst who accused Baku of allowing Iranian Azerbaijani separatists a government-supported platform. Last fall, the arrest of two Iranian truck drivers by Azerbaijani police escalated into Iranian military exercises on Azerbaijan’s borders.

In both those cases Baku appeared to be gently dabbling in stoking separatism, but the recent appeals are the most overt yet.

“Probably our compatriots often look dreamily at us, seeing the constant development of an independent Azerbaijan … So the population of Southern Azerbaijan can take the example of what to strive for,” the Caliber.az piece concluded. “Our southern brothers, we know that you can do it! The time has come!”

As always in Iran-Azerbaijan relations, the shadow of Israel is looming large over this latest bout of tension. In July, Israel’s ambassador to Baku, George Deek, tweeted a photo of himself reading a book called “Mysterious Tales of Tabriz,” referring to the major city of northern Iran. 

The tweet caused a small social media firestorm, with several Azerbaijanis and their supporters tweeting similar images, and resulted in a thinly veiled threat from Iran’s ambassador to Baku, Abbas Mousavi. 

Mousavi subsequently gave a long interview to the Tehran Times in which he portrayed Azerbaijan-Iran relations as warm, with the only sore spot being Israel’s attempts to drive a wedge between them. He did not mention the Zangezur corridor.

On August 31, the defense trade publication Breaking Defense published a piece detailing Israel-Azerbaijani military cooperation and its potential use against Iran.

“[I]t is clear that tight defense relations with Azerbaijan offers Israel some potential benefits, including the deployment of sensors on Azeri soil or using its long border with Iran to enable better penetration of special units into Iran. Azerbaijan could also, in theory, offer up its airspace for Israeli jets to enter Iranian territory if needed,” read the article. It was republished on an Azerbaijani government-run news aggregator.

Malaysia – Sept 3 2022

WARFARE is a tough business. However, peace-building efforts around the table of diplomacy are not less tough than waging a war on the battlefield. It is not an idea that belongs to me. But, anyway, it is mostly a verifiable fact.

What is happening between neighbouring Azerbaijan and Armenia in these days after the 44-Day War (2020) is and must be a very educating case study for scholars and diplomats in this framework.

Keeping 20 per cent of territories of Azerbaijan under its military occupation almost 30 years from the beginning of 1990s, Armenia never was willing to develop its peaceful negotiation skills.

Enjoying advantageous of the land-grab and attempting to demonstrate upper-hand position in the diplomatic talks with Azerbaijan and international mediators like co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Armenia's political and military leadership not only consolidated its domestic authority till 2020 but also severely crippled rationality and common-sense of the Armenian people about peaceful coexistence over the course of decades.

When Armenia launched a new wave of military invasion against Azerbaijan on Sept 27, 2020, there was no option for Azerbaijan except to conduct a counterattack to liberate its lands. Following the Trilateral Statement that was brokered by Russia and ended armed clashes, a new phase of talks emerged between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

To avoid wasting time, Azerbaijan immediately declared its commitment to peaceful settlement by initiating massive restoration and reconstruction projects, returning Armenian PoWs and detainees, or facilitating Russian natural gas transportation to Armenia in order to strengthen the establishment of mutually trustful communication with Armenia.

However, Armenia seems to have adopted a revisionist and uncooperative attitude in the post-war period. Political leadership in Armenia has been complicating the initial environment of reconciliation, let alone showing any trust-building gestures. Just a few cases from the last two years speak out per se.

First, Armenia has rejected sharing maps of mines that were massively contaminated in the territories of Azerbaijan before the 44-Day War. This attitude is not only against the spirit of the Trilateral Statement that ended the war, but also keeps causing superfluous injuries and fatal results to civilians.

Another hostile attitude was observed when the illegally settled Armenians left Kalbajar or Lachin districts of Azerbaijan, which were under the occupation of Armenia. According to the numerous international reports, Armenians departing the liberated territories of Azerbaijan burned houses, set fire to forests, and apparently damaged the natural, cultural and historical environment.

Furthermore, a new political-diplomatic attempt by Armenia in the last few months is detrimental as much as the abovementioned provocations to the ongoing peacebuilding efforts. Nowadays, Armenian leadership at its full capacity declares the need to resume talks with Baku within the OSCE Minsk Group, chaired by France, Russia, and the United States, which has been unsuccessful in finding a peaceful solution since its establishment in 1992.

In his speech on April 12 this year, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev stated that the Minsk Group had been active for 28 years before the Second Karabakh War. The co-chair countries have probably made hundreds of visits to Azerbaijan and Armenia over the years.

The result was zero. The president of Azerbaijan, referring to the Russia-Ukraine War, mentioned that the mandate given to the Minsk Group to resolve the conflict is de jure in force and can already be considered invalid de facto under the current circumstances.

Instead of the Minsk Group, President Aliyev advised that the OSCE could play a role as a credible international organisation, which would be able to host representatives of civil society, the media, and other influential public figures to contribute to the normalisation of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As can be seen, the expected communication and joint working capability among the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs (France, Russia, and the United States) has deteriorated due to the ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. So, the question is: what is Armenia's real agenda in doing so?

Since the Trilateral Statement signed on Nov 10, 2020, Armenia has been lacking in consistency to prove itself as a committed partner in initiating peace negotiations. Of course, the political leadership of Armenia is, in most cases, not able to declare publicly its revisionist attitude towards the obligations of the Trilateral Statement.

Therefore, in order to impede and strike a blow at peace talks or at least to kill time for its real agenda, Armenia seems to exploit the current tense contradictions in the realm of international security.

Another expected political yield for the Armenian leadership to announce the OSCE Minsk Group as a peace coach is domestic. To wit, by summoning the OSCE Minsk Group, the Armenian decision-makers appear to be attempting to shift their own responsibility to an outsider in order to appease hard pressure from Armenian society, which harshly blames the government for its defeat in the war with Azerbaijan.

Armenian leaders must be so watchful as to think that it will not be easy to defend biased arguments on the table of diplomacy in the upcoming period.

Anyway, recent noises in Yerevan about the revival of the OSCE Minsk Group within a fake agenda may not only wear down the problem-solver images of co-chair countries as a side effect, but also may have been supposed to serve as a lifebelt for the Armenian leadership in dealing with the looming bushy problems of domestic and foreign policy.

The writer is Counselor at the Embassy of Azerbaijan

Sept 3 2022

Billionaire Ruben Vardanyan published a video message on his social networks in which he announced the renunciation of Russian citizenship and moving to the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) against the backdrop of aggravation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Recall that the countries have not yet signed a peace agreement, despite the end of the active phase of the Second Karabakh War in November 2020.

I made a decision, realizing the risks I was taking, to renounce Russian citizenship and move to Artsakh (the self-name of the NKR — Note ed.). This decision was very difficult, but so right. I hope my Russian partners and friends will accept this decision of mine as the decision of their friend.

Vardanyan explained his move with a desire to support local residents. He noted that the conflicting parties must go through “a gradual way to reduce the degree of hatred.” He also expressed gratitude to Russia for the presence of peacekeepers on the territory of the unrecognized republic and appealed to the world community to pay attention to the conflict between Yerevan and Baku.

The news was commented on by former Tatler columnist Yunia Pugacheva in her telegram channel.

Perhaps we are also observing optimization to preserve assets and fortunes, because it is known that Ruben Karlenovich created holder structures not only for himself, but also for a very large group of Russian officials and oligarchs just from the time of Troika. And maybe we're watching the — “the new president of Armenia/prime minister”, since it is obvious that the current political situation in Armenia is unstable and its pro-Russian position is due to the hopelessness of both the geographical position and the material. And, apparently, the Kremlin does not see a reliable comrade in any of the current Armenian politicians. But Ruben Karlenovich — It's another matter, your man.

It is quite obvious that simply going to Artsakh to protect the interests of Armenia did not require at all to give up a Russian passport. Unlike Ukraine, there are no problems with dual citizenship in Armenia. Since it is almost impossible to get out of Russian citizenship (it takes years), it is clear that Vardanyan had support in this matter. (author's spelling and punctuation preserved. — Ed.)

Ruben Vardanyan — Russian billionaire of Armenian origin, one of the founders of the Troika Dialog brokerage company, which was bought by Sberbank in 2011. Forbes estimates his fortune at $1 billion. In 2021, Vardanyan took 116th place in the list of the richest people in Russia according to the publication.

Armenia – Sept 3 2022