Category: 2023

Former Armenian military and gov’t official: I will help Hamas kill Jews

Tatoyan Vazgen
Jerusalem Post
Nov 16 2023
By REUTERS

A former advisor to the Armed Forces of Armenia filmed himself in an antisemitic rant, claiming that he will assist Hamas and Hezbollah in killing Jews, "I will scream to the whole world, about the just killing of Jews." 

Political scientist Vladimir Poghosyan is known as an expert on national security in Armenia, he recently filmed himself with his cell phone, while making outrageous statements against Jews, in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre in Israel. The video was shared on social media and is currently in a number of Telegram groups.


"Armenia is not an outpost for the realization of foreign plans" – Pashinyan

Vorskanian Yeghisabet
Nov 16 2023
  • JAMnews
  • Yerevan

Pashinyan on Armenia’s security

The Armenian Prime Minister said that the lack of trust between the his country and Azerbaijan is the reason why Yerevan and Baku have not yet signed a peace agreement.

“Every time we see in Azerbaijan’s statements, perhaps Azerbaijan in ours, the intention to abandon the agreements and plan aggressive actions, which negatively affects the textual work on the peace agreement,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

He went on that Armenia’s political will to conclude a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months is unwavering. But there are “several key issues that require clarification.” One of them is “the formation of a mechanism for overcoming possible discrepancies in the text of the agreement.” He also considers it vital to create security guarantees so that “there is no possibility of any escalation after the signing of the peace agreement.”

The Prime Minister promised to intensify diplomatic and political work to resolve these issues and periodically inform the country’s residents about the results.

  • Borrel threatened Baku with “serious consequences”. Opinion on the EU position
  • “The enclaves may become a pretext for Baku’s next attack” – Armenian political scientist
  • “Americans extending a helping hand”: US-Armenia military cooperation

Pashinyan emphasized that Armenia intends to sign a peace treaty, but cannot “sign it alone.” Three basic principles were agreed upon with Azerbaijan during trilateral meetings held in Brussels on May 14 and July 15, 2023:

  • “Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other’s territorial integrity with the understanding that Armenia’s territory is 29․800 square kilometers and Azerbaijan’s territory is 86,600 square kilometers.
  • The 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration is the political basis for the delimitation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In fact, there is also an understanding that the delimitation should utilize the 1974-1990 maps of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. It is also agreed that Armenia and Azerbaijan have no territorial claims against each other and undertake not to make such claims in the future.
  • Regional transport should be unblocked on the basis of sovereignty, jurisdiction, reciprocity and equality of the countries.”

The Prime Minister believes that the peace agenda should correspond to the system of values and interests of the countries as much as possible. He declares the Republic of Armenia itself and its economic development to be the priority.

Talking about the unblocking of regional transport, Pashinyan announced that some promises that he had not made had been attributed to him. He stated that all of Armenia’s promises are reflected in the Crossroads of Peace project, and the promises received by Armenia are also recorded there.

“We are ready to start the realization of this project a minute earlier and count on the support of the regional countries and the international community.”

According to Beniamin Poghosyan, Azerbaijan may resort to military actions and present them as “liberation of its territories”

According to the 2024 budget, Armenia’s defense spending will more than double compared to 2018. He stated that this means preparing not for war, but for peace, as the most important guarantee of peace and stability is the feeling of security of the country’s residents.

“I am sure all neighboring countries are convinced that we are not going to attack anyone.”

The prime minister does not consider “the concerns expressed about reforming Armenia’s armed forces and acquiring weapons” to be “sincere. He says the reform of the Armed Forces is the duty of every sovereign state, and that over the last 10 years Azerbaijan’s defense expenditures have exceeded Armenia’s expenditures three times.

As the Prime Minister said, Armenia faces the task of reevaluating “the functional significance of the state and statehood”. He believes that the outcome should be the following conclusion:

“Armenia is not a springboard or an outpost for the realization of plans outside its borders, developed outside its borders, but a means of ensuring the security, well-being, freedom and happiness of its own citizens.”

The state, in his opinion, should be guided by the logic of realizing these goals.

“Economic development is the state interest of the Republic of Armenia, and all policies and concepts should be evaluated by how well they fulfill this interest,.”

https://jam-news.net/pashinyan-on-armenias-security/

Armenian PM says to intensify efforts to agree peace treaty with Azerbaijan – TASS

Hambik Zargarian
Reuters
Nov 16 2023

MOSCOW, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he intended to intensify political and diplomatic efforts to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, Russia's TASS news agency reported on Thursday.

In late October, Pashinyan said he intended to conclude a peace treaty with Azerbaijan "in the coming months".

His comments came amid efforts to cement peace in the South Caucasus after Azerbaijan retook the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge

PM Pashinyan: Armenia not preparing grounds for withdrawal from CSTO

Ani Tigranian
Kyrgyzstan – Nov 16 2023

AKIPRESS.COM - Armenia is “not preparing the ground” for withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), but is giving itself and the bloc time to think about further steps, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in Parliament. This is how he commented on the decision to skip the CSTO meeting, which is scheduled for November 23 in Minsk, News.am reports.

According to Pashinyan, Armenia is looking for other partners in the security field, but "it is not going to announce changes in strategic policy until it has declared or decided to leave the CSTO."

The Prime Minister said that the CSTO "has not responded properly to security challenges of Armenia": "De jure, the CSTO refuses to fix its area of responsibility in Armenia. This may mean that in these conditions, by remaining silent, we can share a worldview that could threaten the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Armenia," explained the Armenian prime minister.

Pashinyan said Yerevan did not refuse the CSTO mission, but demanded to clarify "what Armenia is in their minds." "The CSTO did not do this. We cannot accept such a mission, because it turns out that we legitimize the blurred idea of Armenia and thus legitimize Azerbaijan’s invasions," he added.

Pashinyan did not sign the joint declaration of the CSTO Collective Security Council in November 2022 due to the lack of a political assessment of "Azerbaijan’s aggression" against the sovereignty of Armenia. It was about clashes on the border of the two countries in 2021 and 2022, as a result of which Baku occupied about 140 square meters. km of Armenian territory, he said.

In May, Pashinyan admitted that Armenia could suspend its membership in the CSTO. He stated that, in Yerevan's opinion, the CSTO does not respond to requests to send a monitoring mission; thus, one gets the impression that the organization is “leaving Armenia.”

Music with meaning: Bar Harbor band plays for Armenian refugee relief

Emil Lazarian
Maine – Nov 16 2023


    By Nan Lincoln | Special to The Ellsworth American


The Kotwica Band will be performing a concert of international folk tunes to benefit Armenian refugees at Saint Saviour’s Church in Bar Harbor Sunday, Nov. 26 at 2 p.m. Pictured, from left, are: Kevin Stone, Carolyn Rapkievian, David Quinby, David Rapkievian, Eloise Schultz, Frances Stockman and Anne Tatgenhorst.

BAR HARBOR — About 125 years ago, the town of Bar Harbor became galvanized by the plight of the Armenian people, who were being slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands by the Ottoman Turks and forced from their historical homeland, between the Caucuses and the Caspian Sea.

Bar Harbor summer resident Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the declining Ottoman Empire, was the first to sound the alarm about this ongoing genocide. He eventually resigned in protest over what the Turks (eventually joined by the German army at the outset of World War I) were doing in Armenia and the lack of a cohesive, official American response.

In 1897, the Bar Harbor Record reported, “A most interesting lecture was given at the Congregational church by Rev. A. S. Abraham on the Armenian question. The church was filled, and the audience listened with rapt attention to the recitation of the wrongs done the race.”

By 1915, an estimated 1,500,000 Armenians, more than half of the total population living in their ancient homeland, had been massacred and thousands more displaced.

“I am firmly convinced that this is the greatest crime of the ages,” Morgenthau told Congress.

There are some who believe the reluctance of Europe and America to hold the Turks responsible for their war crimes against the Armenians emboldened Hitler to implement his extermination of the Jews. If the world could look the other away at the mass destruction of its oldest Christian nation (301 AD), would it come to the rescue of Europe’s Jewish population? The Holocaust may have been the terrible answer to that question.

If the world’s governments failed to act in time to prevent the Armenian disaster, the American people in big cities and small towns like Bar Harbor did pay attention. According to the Bar Harbor Times, in 1917, the Congregational church donated $91 to Armenian relief; the Sewing Circle voted to contribute its refreshment money, and in 1919, even the Sunday School pitched in $5 a month to support one of the thousands of children orphaned by the Turkish pogroms.

Led by Morgenthau and fellow Bar Harbor rusticator Cleveland Dodge, with the help of author Julia Ward Howe, Charlie Chaplin, child star Jackie Coogan and many others, Americans would raise $116 million in funds and supplies (worth more than $2 billion today).

A century of uneasy peace followed the fall of the Ottoman Empire, including two world wars and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. On the one hand this exacerbated the tension between the Islamic Turks and the Christian Armenians by creating the Turkic state of Azerbaijan on the large oil- and mineral-rich section of historic Armenian lands bordering the Caspian Sea, and on the other hand managed to prevent further mass slaughter (although not deadly pogroms) with its iron-fisted control of the region.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 1991, Azerbaijan became increasingly emboldened to reclaim the region of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), an autonomous ethnic Armenian enclave within its borders. In 2020, when the world’s focus was on the COVID pandemic, Azerbaijan launched a major attack on Artsakh, creating a new humanitarian crisis as the ethnic Armenian population fled what they fear will be another genocide.

So once again Bar Harbor and area residents at large are being asked to help as they did a century ago when local church congregations and schoolchildren contributed to Armenian relief.

The Kotwica Band, led by David and Carolyn Rapkievian of Bar Harbor, will be giving a concert to benefit Armenian refugees on Sunday, Nov. 26, at 2 p.m. at St. Saviour’s Church in Bar Harbor (41 Mount Desert St.). The concert will feature music from Armenia and the neighboring countries — Poland, Macedonia, Ukraine, Romania and Greece — where many Armenians settled after the last diaspora.

For the Rapkievians it is personal. Carolyn’s Armenian relatives were among those who fell victim to the Ottoman slaughter, and the horrors they endured are part of her family lore. A photograph of her grandfather’s handsome family is not simply evidence of her Armenian heritage but a memento of loss.

“When the photo was taken, my grandfather Hovnan Okoomian had already been sent to America for safety,” Rapkievian said. “My great-grandparents who are pictured seated in the photo were beheaded in front of the children, and the youngest children were killed along with the eldest sister’s husband. The sisters were taken into a harem and raped.”

She says American missionaries eventually helped her surviving family members escape. U.S. missionaries also helped her then-infant maternal grandmother escape by pretending she was their own child and her mother their maid. Sadly, such horrors are no longer a part of the Armenian people’s past.

“Just this past September,” Rapkievian said, “120,000 people — nearly the entire population of Artsakh — fled across the border to Armenia in an arduous three-day exodus to escape attacks on their villages and towns. These refugees, who left behind their belongings, their livelihoods and their lands, are undernourished and have medical needs.

She said Armenia, now a small democratic republic wedged between modern-day Turkey and Azerbaijan, is a poor country and unable to support a refugee crisis of this magnitude.

Rapkievian hopes people will once again rally to support the Armenian people by attending the Nov. 26 concert.

“We hope they’ll enjoy our music, too,” she added with a smile, picking up her drum to resume the rehearsal.

Carolyn and her husband, David, play a variety of instruments themselves including fiddle, guitar, oud (a precursor of the lute), balalaika and drum; they have recruited button accordionist Kevin Stone of Waterville, bass player David Quinby of Sedgwick and three singers, Anne Tatgenhorst of Winterport, College of the Atlantic grad Eloise Shultz and Conners Emerson School eighth-grader Frances Stockman (whose aunt, the late Kirsten Stockman, co-founded with Tatgenhorst the Maine Women’s Balkan Choir).

Kotwica plans to perform 15 songs that speak of love, loss and yearning.

“Many of the songs have a dual meaning,” Rapkievian said. “For instance the first song, ‘Gorani,’ is Armenian and the words are about the loss of love. But it is also about the loss of a homeland.”

As they practice, one can hear that thread of longing, interwoven into often lilting tunes that beg to be danced to and most often are.

“At this Thanksgiving time we are especially thankful for our town’s support of the Armenian people — both in the past and present,” Rapkievien said. “Our songs and our music have survived, and we are thrilled to be able share them and our story with everyone.

“And, yes,” she added, “there will probably be dancing.”

https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/lifestyle/arts/music-with-meaning-bar-harbor-band-plays-for-armenian-refugee-relief/article_92f0bebc-84b9-11ee-b415-331c890ccccf.html













Synagogue in Armenia Set on Fire Amid Alarming Surge in Antisemitism: Reports

Baghdasarian Karlen
The Algemeiner, Germany
Nov 16 2023

A synagogue in Yerevan, Armenia was set on fire on Wednesday evening in an antisemitic arson attack, the second incident targeting the city’s Jewish community since last month, according to several reports and video circulating on social media.

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) claimed responsibility for attacking the Mordechai Navi Synagogue, the only Jewish place of worship operating in the country, Azerbaijani media and other sources reported.

Azerbaijani Ambassador to Germany Nasimi Aghayev was among those who shared footage of the synagogue attack on social media.

On Oct. 3, the synagogue was vandalized and targeted with a Molotov cocktail in an antisemitic act for which ASALA — a Marxist-Leninist group designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in 1989 — also claimed responsibility.

The attackers issued a statement saying, “The Jews are the enemies of the Armenian nation, complicit in Turkish crimes and the regime of [Azerbaijan President Ilhan] Aliyev. The Jewish state provides weapons to Aliyev’s criminal regime, and Jews from America and Europe actively support him. Turkey, Aliyev’s regime, and the Jews are the sworn enemies of the Armenian state and people.”

The group added: “If Jewish rabbis in the United States and Europe continue to support Aliyev’s regime, we will continue to burn their synagogues in other countries. Every rabbi will be a target for us. No Israeli Jew will feel safe in these countries.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan share a border and have a long history of conflict. Israel and Azerbaijan have engaged in close cooperation, including weapons sales, in recent years.

Armenia is home to about 500-1,000 Jews, mostly of Ashkenazi origin, localized in in the capital of Yerevan, according to World Jewish Congress estimates.

After Wednesday’s incident, ASALA reportedly threatened to continue attacks against the Jewish community outside of Armenia. Israeli media outlets reported that the group issued a statement linking the latest arson to the war in Gaza, expressing “solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements against Zionism.”

ASALA, arguably the best known of the Armenian militant groups formed during the last century, was active in the 1970s through the 1990s, but has been less visible since. The organization, which was responsible for several terrorist attacks and assassinations, was armed and trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). During the 1980s, ASALA terrorists trained with Palestinian factions in Lebanon, developing ties with the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group within the PLO.

This week’s targeting of an Armenian synagogue came as countries around the world, especially in the US and Europe, have experienced a historic spike in antisemitic incidents following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

“Armenia’s only synagogue last night was burned down in an antisemitic attack,” tweeted the National Jewish Assembly in the UK. “Jews around the world are feeling less and less safe every day because of actions like this. We are seeing people be bystanders to antisemitic attacks.”

Wednesday night’s arson attack was reminiscent of a similar incident in Tunisia last month, when hundreds of Tunisians reportedly burnt the el-Hamma Synagogue in the Gabès Governorate.

Azerbaijan Slams U.S. For Siding With Armenians, Will Skip Meeting With Armenia In D.C. As Tensions Rise

Boris Nahapetian
Daily Wire
Nov 16 2023
By  Zach Jewell

•

Nov 16, 2023 

As tensions spill over in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it would not be attending a meeting with Armenia that was set for next Monday in Washington, D.C., condemning the U.S. for taking a “one-sided approach” to the conflict between the European countries. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been looking to ramp up peace talks between his country and Azerbaijan as the nations contend for the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The 1,700-square-mile mountainous slice of land has been inhabited by Armenians for thousands of years, but it is surrounded by Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim nation that says the region is its territory. 

Azerbaijan was angered by testimony from U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien, who spoke to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The country said O’Brien’s remarks were “one-sided and biased” after the assistant secretary of state discussed Azerbaijan’s take over of Nagorno-Karabakh in September, which forced more than 100,000 Armenians to flee their homes in what has escalated to ethnic cleansing of the Christian population from the oldest Christian nation in the world. 

During the hearing, O’Brien told the committee that the U.S. government has “urged Azerbaijan to ensure all ethnic Armenians who have departed Nagorno-Karabakh are guaranteed a safe, dignified, and sustainable return, should they so choose, with their rights and security guaranteed.” 

“We have also called for Azerbaijan to respect and protect the cultural heritage of the many groups who have lived in the region throughout the millennia,” O’Brien said, adding, “Our message to Armenia and the displaced has been unambiguous: The United States will support Armenia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic institutions.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry claimed that O’Brien’s testimony left out important context in the conflict. Azerbaijan accused Armenia of refusing to respond to peace negotiations “for more than two months” and claimed Armenia was “illegally stationing” more than 10,000 troops in Nagorno-Karabakh before Azerbaijan’s takeover. The country also said U.S. officials are unwelcome in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. 

The Muslim country’s bombardment of Nagorno-Karabakh in September was preceded by a military blockade that began last December, which cut off access to food, electricity, and water from the outside. Yana Avanesyan, a doctoral researcher who is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh, told The Daily Wire last month that the religious difference between the two countries plays a major role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

“When we say Armenians, we are speaking about us being Christians,” Avanesyan told The Daily Wire. “We know they hate us so much that they will just destroy everything.” 

The U.S. has taken a clear stance in the conflict, condemning Azerbaijan for its recent actions in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

“Azerbaijan’s use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh has eroded trust and raised doubts regarding Baku’s commitment to a comprehensive peace with Armenia,” O’Brien said. “Given this new reality, the Department has made it clear to Azerbaijan that there cannot be ‘business as usual’ in our bilateral relationship. The United States has condemned Azerbaijani actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, canceled high-level bilateral meetings and engagements with Azerbaijan, and suspended plans for future events.”  



Azerbaijan rejects Armenia peace talks in US over Washington’s ‘biased remarks’

Karagyozian Lena
France 24
Nov 16 2023

Azerbaijan on Thursday refused to participate in normalisation talks with arch-foe Armenia that were planned in the United States this month over what it said was Washington’s “biased” position.

Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Baku reclaimed in September after a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists.

Internationally mediated peace talks between the ex-Soviet republics have seen little progress but both countries’ leaders have said a comprehensive peace agreement could be signed by the end of the year.

“We do not consider it possible to hold the proposed meeting on the level of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington on November 20, 2023,” Baku’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The move followed a hearing in the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, where, the ministry said, Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien made “one-sided and biased remarks” about Azerbaijan.

O’Brien told the House Committee that “nothing will be normal with Azerbaijan after the events of September 19 until we see progress on the peace track.”

“We’ve cancelled a number of high-level visits, condemned (Baku’s) actions,” he added.

The Azerbaijani foreign ministry said: “Such a unilateral approach by the United States could lead to the loss of the United States’ mediation role.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday that Yerevan’s “political will to sign, in the coming months, a peace agreement with Azerbaijan remains unwavering.”


Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have held several rounds of talks under EU mediation.

But last month, Aliyev refused to attend a round of negotiations with Pashinyan in Spain, citing France’s “biased position.”

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join EU chief Charles Michel as mediators at those talks.

So far, there has been no visible progress in EU efforts to organise a fresh round of negotiations.

(AFP)

"The enclaves may become a pretext for Baku’s next attack" – Armenian political scientist

Hambardsumian Paul
Nov 13 2023
  • JAMnews
  • Yerevan

Consequences of the termination of negotiations

“If the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks are frozen, i.e. the process stops on both Western and Russian platforms, Azerbaijan will have a window of new opportunities for a military attack on Armenia,” political analyst Beniamin Poghosyan believes.

He warns that the Azerbaijani side may launch military actions not only on the pretext of obtaining the so-called “Zangezur corridor”, i.e. a road uncontrolled by Armenia to connect with Nakhichevan, but also “enclaves”. In his opinion, this is a more realistic scenario of Baku’s actions, for which the Azerbaijani authorities are now preparing grounds.

  • “We expect cooperation with EU in security sphere” – Armenian Security Council Secretary
  • “Armenia was only reacting to challenges”: on the situation after the 2020 war
  • “Apart from Armenia, no one needs the Crossroads of Peace.” Opinion from Yerevan

Given the weather conditions and the terrain, the political analyst suggests that military action is unlikely in winter. They could start in spring, and the reason for them could be, in Baku’s terminology, “Armenian-occupied villages or enclaves”.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly publicly stated that Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity of 86,600 square kilometers. But he has not received reciprocal recognition by Azerbaijan of Armenia’s territorial integrity. At a press conference organized in late May, Pashinyan also stated that Armenia’s 29,800 square kilometers of territorial integrity does not include the village of Tigranashen in Ararat province and six villages in Tavush province.

And now, according to the political analyst, it is important to understand whether the enclaves fall within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, which the Armenian prime minister has recognized:

“If Armenia recognizes that there is a territory under its control that it considers part of Azerbaijan, I am afraid that we may have the same situation here as on September 19, 2023 [referring to the military actions of the Azerbaijani army on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, after which the entire Armenian population moved to Armenia].”

Poghosyan explains that Azerbaijan could resort to military action and present it as “liberating its territories, exercising the right to self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter.”

“I don’t rule out that we will have a situation where the Russian president will say, ‘What should I do?’ Armenia has said that these enclaves are Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan is returning its territories. And there will be no special reaction from the West,” he said.

Areg Kochinyan proposes to engage an American private military company to solve Armenia’s security problems until the completion of defense reforms

Poghosyan emphasizes that Baku has already received the maximum from its Western partners, “namely, it conducted ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh with zero reaction to it from the West”. In addition, within the framework of the Western negotiating platform, the Azerbaijani side achieved

  • “an agreement to recognize territorial integrity within the Soviet administrative boundaries,
  • Armenia’s recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, as well as the rejection of the demand for autonomy”

He recalls that Armenia made concessions and “lowered the bar on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh”, expecting to receive guarantees of rights and security of Armenians of the unrecognized republic, but received nothing. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan used the concessions of the Armenian side as a “legitimate basis for attacking Artsakh”.

According to the analyst, Baku has nothing more to gain from the Western platform, so it is “saying goodbye to it and trying to return to the Russian negotiating platform”.

Military expert Leonid Nersisyan believes that “Baku will not occupy, for example, the southern region of Armenia, Syunik, but will resort to a new escalation”

The analyst says that Armenia is disappointed with the Western platform, as it did not get anything there, but also does not want to return to the Russian platform. He notes that given strained Armenian-Russian relations, Azerbaijan has “started flirting” with Russia and Iran:

“Azerbaijan is trying to make Armenia look like a state that is constantly trying to ensure the presence of ‘enemy forces’ here for Russia and Iran — the EU and the US.”

In addition, Baku supports the Russian and Iranian position that regional problems should be solved by regional countries and the presence of extra-regional powers only harms the process of normalization of relations.

“If we continue to avoid the Russian platform, Azerbaijan will further toughen this rhetoric of its, saying to Russia and Iran: look, Armenia wants to bring your enemies to the South Caucasus,” he said.

In this case, according to the political analyst, there will be “additional problems not only in Armenian-Russian, but also in Armenian-Iranian relations, which is not in Armenia’s interests.”


IRNA to expand media cooperation with Armenia: CEO

Boris Nahapetian
IRNA – Iran
Nov 15 2023

Tehran, IRNA- Managing director of the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Ali Naderi has held a meeting with Armenian Ambassador to Tehran Arsen Avagyan to explore ways to expand media cooperation between Iran and Armenia.

During the meeting at IRNA’s headquarters in Tehran on Wednesday, Avagyan expressed his country's interest in developing media cooperation with Iran, especially IRNA as the official news agency of the Islamic Republic.

The ambassador said that increased media cooperation between the two countries would lead to a better understanding between the Iranian and Armenian people.

He considered the exchange of media and news delegations between Iran and Armenia as an effective step in strengthening the communication between the two nations.

At the meeting, Naderi also pointed to the friendly ties between Iran and Armenia and said, “We are always ready to expand relations in all areas.”

He also said that IRNA’s media policy toward neighboring countries reflects Iran’s foreign policy of developing closer ties with regional countries.

IRNA and the Armenian News Agency signed a memorandum of understanding in 2017 to increase media interactions.

https://en.irna.ir/news/85292607/IRNA-to-expand-media-cooperation-with-Armenia-CEO