Authorities drop investigation into the pepper-spray assault of a nine-year-old during Yom Kippur, heightening concerns over security in the historic Armenian Quarter.
Israeli police have closed their investigation into the alleged pepper-spray attack on a nine-year-old Armenian boy in Jerusalem without making any arrests, a decision that has sparked outrage and heightened security concerns within the city’s historic Armenian community. The incident, which occurred during Yom Kippur near the Mamilla neighborhood, is the latest in a series of targeted assaults against Armenian residents and religious institutions. Despite the existence of security camera footage, the decision to drop the case underscores the challenges minority communities face in securing accountability for hate-motivated violence in the contested city.
The Yom Kippur assault
The attack was first brought to public attention by Israeli Channel 13 journalist Yossi Eli, who detailed the incident on his social media account. According to Eli, the nine-year-old boy, identified as William, was riding his bicycle and listening to music through headphones when he was intercepted by a group of young men near the upscale Mamilla district, which borders the Old City. The group allegedly threatened the child, demanded that he remove his headphones, and subsequently sprayed him in the face with pepper spray before fleeing the scene.
Eli published footage showing the distressed child receiving medical assistance in an ambulance, identifying the assailants as Jewish extremists. The psychological toll on the boy has been severe. William’s mother told reporters that her son now suffers from acute sleep disturbances and has developed a profound fear of individuals of “Jewish appearance.” Compounding the trauma, this was the second time William has been targeted in recent months; during a previous incident, his father was present and managed to physically intervene to protect him from the aggressors.
A pattern of targeted harassment
The pepper-spray attack is not an isolated event but part of a disturbing pattern of harassment directed at the Armenian community in Jerusalem. The Armenian Quarter, one of the four historic quarters of the Old City, has been home to the community since the fourth century, making it one of the oldest surviving Armenian diasporas in the world. However, in recent years, residents and clergy have reported an escalation in verbal abuse, vandalism, and physical confrontations, often perpetrated by fringe extremist groups seeking to intimidate minority Christians.
Just weeks prior to the attack on William, tensions flared following a separate incident on August 2. Israeli police arrested six ultra-Orthodox Jewish youths who were caught on camera striking the heavy wooden entrance door of the St. James Monastery and throwing stones toward the ancient monastic complex. The St. James Monastery is a spiritual and cultural anchor for the Armenian Patriarchate, and the assault on its premises drew widespread condemnation from international human rights organizations and diplomatic missions monitoring religious freedom in the region.
Policing and accountability gaps
The closure of the investigation into William’s assault has raised serious questions about policing priorities and the classification of hate crimes in Jerusalem. Journalist Yossi Eli noted that while the incident was clearly captured by local security cameras, police investigators ultimately closed the file without detaining or questioning any suspects. This discrepancy between available digital evidence and law enforcement action has fueled accusations of systemic apathy toward crimes committed against minority communities in the city’s volatile urban environment.
Community leaders argue that the failure to prosecute these offenses emboldens extremists and creates an atmosphere of impunity. Without robust intervention from municipal and national authorities, the Armenian Patriarchate has been forced to rely increasingly on private security measures and community watchdogs to document incidents that official channels fail to address. The reliance on independent journalists to surface evidence of hate crimes highlights a significant gap in the institutional protection of vulnerable populations.
Community resilience and international attention
In response to the escalating hostility, the Armenian community has mobilized to protect its congregants and properties, appealing to international diplomatic missions for increased pressure on local authorities. The intersection of religious freedom, property rights, and minority protection remains one of the most complex geopolitical challenges in Jerusalem, a city claimed as a capital by both Israelis and Palestinians. The ancient Christian communities, including Armenians, Greeks, and Latins, view their continued presence as essential to the city’s pluralistic identity.
The closure of the case leaves the Armenian community grappling with a profound sense of vulnerability. As the failure to hold perpetrators accountable threatens the fragile coexistence that has defined the city’s ancient quarters for centuries, community leaders warn that without decisive action, the historic Christian presence in Jerusalem may face irreversible demographic and cultural erosion. The upcoming weeks will be critical in determining whether international pressure can compel a reopening of the investigation and a broader strategy to protect minority rights in the holy city.
TEHRAN, Sep. 25 (MNA) – Emphasizing that Iran keen to establish very close cooperation with the regional states, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stressed the need to accelerate the implementation of bilateral agreement inked with Armenia.
Pezeshkian made the remarks during a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The Iranian president said following up on bilateral agreements, particularly those related to regional transit routes, is a top priority for his administration.
He stressed Iran’s determination to honor its commitments and said Tehran would make every effort to advance the implementation of bilateral agreements and expand cooperation with Armenia.
Armenian prime minister, for his part, called for accelerating the implementation of the agreements, saying they would contribute to the development of regional countries and help promote peace and stability.
They dig through the archives, pull out every old photograph they can find, share them and lament.
The picture that emerges is roughly this: it is as if it were 2026 in Azerbaijan and 1992 in Armenia.
It is like watching footage from that very period from our own history, with the sound removed; you could hardly tell that it belongs to Armenia.
One group in Armenia is going through the same social, political, social and physical traumas that we experienced in the 1990s. Or perhaps there are two groups in Armenia, one led by Pashinyan and the other by Andranik and Nzhdeh. Yet the latter have long been dead.
It is understandable that this group may be living through its losses and pain in a kind of masochistic way, deriving a sense of satisfaction from the consequences of its own actions, and that perhaps what keeps it going is precisely this sense of revenge. But just as there is no place for this poisoned mindset among us, it has no place in Armenia either. Because, from today’s perspective, thanks to the joint efforts of the diplomatic leaders of both peoples, those who were defeated continue to be defeated once again.
However, the Armenian mindset accepts facts — in other words, it is drawn to strength and tends to betray soft protection.
Albanian heritage in Karabakh is a specific page of Azerbaijan’s history. What could be more natural than for us to embrace it? The visit of diplomats led by Hikmet Hajiyev to Karabakh and their acquaintance with its Albanian heritage caused what was perhaps the biggest shock among Armenians since the war. As the imperial myth built on falsehoods began to collapse, an attempt was made to create a major wave of reaction.
Then there was a pause in meetings of the initiative groups, followed, ultimately, by the Armenian intelligence chief’s overnight visit to Baku.
The fact that the only image we have from which to comment on the visit is a tense and desperate-looking photograph may perhaps be enough for us to draw a conclusion based on its emotional appearance.
The world is changing. That world no longer exists; it has disappeared from the framework of global law. Azerbaijan has established strong regional ties, while Armenia is not prepared for such a global upheaval.
The country is trying to open its arms and lean on Azerbaijan and Türkiye as soon as possible in order to preserve its name on the map in the coming period.
This is not a claim; it is the extremely harsh reality of our present day. All ethical principles and rules have been violated. If you can wake up, you will survive; otherwise, being reduced to dust in the mill of history by a sudden move from great powers is not particularly difficult. This is the agenda Armenia is living with. Most importantly, Armenia does not have a Türkiye of its own in that geography: it has Iran eyeing its territory, Russia striking it over the head, and the West telling it from afar, “Don’t be afraid.”
And now, against such an Azerbaijan, incomprehensible voices are being heard in Armenia.
Is this possible?
In Armenia, there is also a figure like Alen Simonyan who knows Hikmet Hajiyev’s personal phone number and remains in regular contact with him. Who could better understand the Armenian people’s dignity and interpret Azerbaijan’s power than him?
Pragmatic Armenians such as Simonyan are confronting the majority of media figures who still carry revanchist sentiments. One of his responsibilities is precisely to manage this group and consider what response Armenia will give to Azerbaijan tomorrow.
In a changing world, if there is anything truly great in tiny, very tiny Armenia, it is the Armenian people themselves. Their ideas are killing them. But pragmatism keeps them alive.
For the sake of living and planting trees of peace rather than revenge, Hajiyev’s phone is still open — for now.
Ruling Civil Contract MPs and Armenian government representatives walked out of a parliamentary hearing on the difficulties faced by Nagorno-Karabakh refugees on Wednesday.
Some attendees had been introduced as representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh authorities and parliamentary factions.Since Azerbaijan’s full takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, Armenian authorities have repeatedly warned against the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh state institutions or a government-in-exile in Armenia, claiming it could be used by Azerbaijan as a pretext to take military action against Armenia.
Yerevan warns of ‘ticking time bomb’ as Nagorno-Karabakh government-in-exile debate rages
The hearing was attended by representatives of all parliamentary factions, refugees, and Armenian government officials from several ministries and agencies, including the deputy Minister of Labour and Social affairs, Lusine Kocharyan.
The ruling party MPs left the hearing almost an hour after Armenia Alliance MP and committee chair Lilit Galstyan introduced several attendees as representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh authorities and parliamentary factions, naming them individually.
‘I am very glad that today we have such a serious delegation from the Parliament of the Republic of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh], and this will make our discussion more substantive and comprehensive’, Galstyan said.
After such an introduction, the discussion continued with the Nagorno-Karabakh representatives raising issues affecting refugees’ integration, including gaps in the government’s state housing programme. According to refugee representatives, around 4,000 families have been able to purchase homes under the programme so far.
They also raised concerns over cuts to financial assistance, which they said had significantly worsened refugees’ social conditions, as well as high unemployment. The region’s former State Minister, Artak Beglaryan, said the poverty rate among refugees reaches 60%–70%, compared with an average of 23% in Armenia.
Beglaryan also highlighted hate speech targeting the refugees, which was also generated by the authorities and criticised the authorities for their selective approach when it came to accountability.
Pashinyan calls Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian refugees ‘runaways’ in argument on metro
The discussion was interrupted by Civil Contract MP Mariam Poghosyan, who raised her hand to ask a question.
‘We came here today expecting to discuss issues concerning the social problems of our compatriots from Karabakh, but this meeting seems to have turned into an interparliamentary meeting, with the names of various official positions being mentioned. We have repeatedly said that there cannot be two parliaments, two governments in Armenia. We are forced to leave this discussion’, Poghosyan said.
Civil Contract MPs and government representatives subsequently left the hearing.
Galstyan, who said it was their ‘right’ to leave, expressed surprise that government representatives had also followed them.
‘Government representatives, are these issues not addressed to you? I don’t understand why you are leaving this hall. You are the government, and you are accountable to the parliament’, Galstyan said.
In turn, the region’s former Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan expressed hope that the government representatives would at least follow the discussion online to see what issues were being raised.
After leaving the hearing, MP Poghosyan told reporters that the authorities maintain regular contact with Nagorno-Karabakh refugees and work to address their concerns.
Following the incident, international law specialist Ara Ghazaryan, who attended the hearing, compared the Armenian authorities’ behaviour with Azerbaijan’s conduct, when the latter asked the European Court of Human Rights not to use the Armenian toponyms when referring to Nagorno-Karabakh or to refer to documents issued in Nagorno-Karabakh.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
The artist Dana Mashoian Walrath’s new book honours the Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust. But she also expects it to get her banned from Israel.
That is because The Book of Genocides also contains a chapter that portrays Palestinians forced to live as second-class citizens and watch their homes bulldozed or bombed. “What does it mean to be starved?” the narrative asks. “To know that perpetrators have themselves experienced genocide and now commit genocide against you?”
There are many more questions posed by Walrath’s graphic history, which is quite unlike any other book about humanity’s periodic descents into the abyss of mass extermination and ethnic cleansing over the past five centuries.
In an experimental blend of anthropology, memoir and visual art, which encourages readers to cut the pages and create three-part interactive figures, she offers 10 case studies ranging from the killing of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the enslavement of Africans to the Armenian genocide, Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Palestine and the persecution of the Rohingya.
Walrath, 66, an artist, writer and anthropologist, travelled to all 10 places represented in the book and has a personal connection with genocide. She is Armenian-American, the granddaughter of survivors who fled the systematic destruction of the Ottoman empire’s Armenian population during the first world war. For decades, her family’s survival story was condensed into a single narrative fragment.
When she asked her mother about her own mother’s childhood in western Armenia, she replied: “After her parents were killed, she hid during the day and ran at night with Uncle Benny and Aunt Alice from their home in Palu to the orphanage in Aleppo.”
It was only recently that deeper, more horrifying layers of that journey were revealed. When her mother, Alice, was diagnosed with dementia and moved into her home, Walrath took a leave of absence from her academic career to engage in full-time creative work, eventually publishing a verse novel about the Armenian genocide, Like Water on Stone.
The Genocide of Black Americans. Photograph: Harvard University Press
“After that novel came out my older relatives started telling me more details of what happened,” Walrath says from her studio near Burlington in Vermont, adorned with towering draft pages of The Book of Genocides and a monumental portrait of her mother. “I did not know about my grandmother hiding in an urn while her father was dismembered until about five years ago.
“She was taken into enslavement with her son. I also learned that my grandmother, at one point probably after sex, hit her enslaver on the head with a stone and the two of them fled. This is what my aunt told me. Can I verify it? Can I find these facts? I don’t know.”
This inheritance of violence and survival has haunted Walrath’s life and given her a personal connection to genocide, wherever it happens. She reflects: “It’s knowing what it does to people and knowing how it leaves holes inside of you and that you have to figure out how to overcome the desire to get even.
“You have to figure out how to transform the anger and the hurt into something productive and I feel like I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to figure out how to do that. Writing the novel let me exorcise a lot of demons and then writing this book was so gratifying because I could literally bring people together.”
Walrath committed herself to traveling to every location depicted in the book, seeking out survivors and descendants to sit with them in their grief. She spoke with survivors of Pol Pot’s killing fields in Phnom Penh, met with perpetrators and survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and visited Rohingya refugees in the sprawling camps of Bangladesh.
This deep exposure to human suffering took a severe toll on her physical health. The 66-year-old recalls via Zoom: “I got physically sick at various times and it would usually take the form of a terrible chest cold. Grief is supposed to live in the lungs and I got very sick after Auschwitz. I got very sick in 2013 when I crossed into the West Bank through the wall to go to Bethlehem with a bunch of Armenian pilgrims.”
Dana Mashoian Walrath in her studio Photograph: Harvard University Press
“I remember right after I came back from Auschwitz I was reading [Polish lawyer and Holocaust scholar] Raphael Lemkin’s autobiography. It starts out great and then he comes unravelled in the last couple of chapters. I had a spell where I was thinking, oh no, what if I lose my mind?
“Then I went through no, no, I have very good supports and live in nature and, at this moment in time, as America is well on its way into a very scary place, I felt like I could get up every morning and have something concrete to do to push back. When I reread the book recently it was even more shocking how many elements of USA 2026 are present in all these genocides.”
To convey these heavy histories, Walrath turned to a medium distinctively suited to representing the unrepresentable: comics. In the tradition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Joe Sacco’s Palestine, The Book of Genocides uses the graphic form to bridge the gap between abstract history and raw empathy.
“Comics are very active. I love cinema and it’s a very powerful medium for learning about things that might be outside of your experience but it is passive. You sit in your seat and you take it in. Comics are probably closer to cinema than anything else but they’re active. They’re created by a series of fragments that the reader has to take in and process and put together in an active way and because of that it gave me a vocabulary to talk about these horrors without making people run away from them.”
Walrath deliberately avoided drawing explicit, realistic acts of violence, opting instead for metaphorical representations. “I left out drawing most of the horror and was always walking the line between making sure the image was gonna draw people in, even if it was talking about something horrible,” she says.
The book’s unsettling interactive design aims to force readers to confront the systemic patterns of dehumanisation that make such horrors possible. Readers are invited to cut certain portrait pages into thirds, creating a “turn-the-flap” sequence – a structural device reminiscent of the surrealist game of “exquisite corpse”. As the reader flips the segmented pages, the illustrated human subjects transform back and forth between recognisable faces and non-human creatures – beasts, predators, vermin and parasites.
The Palestinian Genocide. Photograph: Harvard University Press
For Walrath, this physical interaction is not a gimmick but an exercise in moral philosophy. She explains:“I wanted people to try and get inside the mind of someone else and also to make it so that they would feel their potential complicity. Have I always spoken up when I’ve heard somebody call someone else a monster? Have I always spoken up if someone is called a parasite? I don’t know. A lot of times we let things slide.
“We’ve invited people to cut the pages to get people thinking about how we’re taught: what’s allowed and what isn’t allowed. We’re not supposed to desecrate books. We love books and yet we’re taught that war is OK, that it’s OK to kill other people. I wanted it there in an interactive, metaphorical but also subconscious way, rather than saying, this is what we do. People take it in differently when they’re interacting with it.”
The Book of Genocides relies on the concept of genocide developed by Lemkin and enshrined in the 1948 Genocide Convention: ‘acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” and marked by a process of dehumanisation of the targeted group.
As an anthropologist, Walrath finds a common thread running through half a millennium of genocidal violence. She argues that they are often less spontaneous outbursts of tribal hatred than highly planned, bureaucratic operations, with material interests – particularly land – playing a central role.
“Land theft almost always. The only exception is not really an exception; it’s enslavement. The Europeans stole Africa but then also stole African people and then put them into the transatlantic slave trade so, even though the land stealing was going on within the Americas, it was dependent upon European colonisation. Settler colonialism is nearly always there.
“Dehumanisation is part of that and then systemic injustices within the societies. These are precursors to massacre. What’s the difference between prisons in the US and many other countries where strictly disenfranchised people are the majority of the prisoners, and the Warsaw Ghetto?”
Perhaps the most controversial decision in The Book of Genocides is its chapter that addresses the history of Palestinian displacement and the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza. The inclusion of Palestine under the banner of genocide is a move that Walrath knew would draw fierce criticism and potentially severe professional consequences.
Dana Mashoian Walrath in her studio. Photograph: Harvard University Press
“I decided that was the right thing to do because the goal of the book is to spark conversations, to put it out there, to talk about Palestine, call it a genocide, and let people start speaking with each other about it.
“It would be great for someone to try and say why it is and isn’t genocide, and at the same time. I think that the way I’ve employed the term is aligned with Raphael Lemkin’s intention about what genocide was. It’s aligned with the convention, with the Rome statute, and what we’re watching is political machinations making the convention useless.”
Walrath adds: “Indiscriminate bombing of any place is a war crime for sure. When we’re killing babies and killing children and keeping people from healthcare and selectively bombing hospitals and journalists, I have no doubt in my mind that this is a systemic attempt to eliminate a people.”
She is clear-eyed about the fallout of this stance in Israel. “I probably won’t be allowed to visit again, which would be sad because I have respect for the real peace activists there. Honestly, going to Jerusalem as an Armenian was incredibly powerful. But maybe this will change and in my lifetime maybe I’ll live long enough that I will be able to go back but I know right now after this book comes out I will no longer be able to arrive at the airport.”
Despite the harrowing terrain of her subject matter, Walrath remains fundamentally an optimist. She rejects the jaundiced view that human violence is an evolutionary inevitability. “I am sure that’s not true. I am sure that we’re hardwired to care for one another. Every time we see dehumanisation get undone in the midst of a war it’s because someone’s heart has been touched.
“It’s governments that perpetrate genocides and it’s baked into our systems and structures and because those systems and structures and governments are all human-made creations, we can make better ones. A rugged as the content is, the message is an underlying message of hope and that we can change this. It’s not inevitable.”
Armenia and the U.S. have extended their critical-minerals framework to cover geological mapping, exploration, separation, and processing, though the May agreement remains non-binding.
No internationally compliant rare-earth resource or producing REE mine has been publicly disclosed in Armenia, despite decades of geological studies at sites like the Tezhsar alkaline complex.
The TRIPP corridor positions Armenia as a potential regional processing and logistics hub for critical minerals from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, not just a domestic ore supplier.
Armenia ranked sixth globally in molybdenum production in 2024, with copper-molybdenum exports heavily dependent on China, highlighting the strategic urgency of diversification.
Key geological studies from 1989 to 2025 identify REE-bearing minerals at multiple Armenian sites, but interesting geology has not yet translated into mineable, economic tonnage.
Armenia and the United States are pushing their critical-minerals partnership from diplomacy toward technical execution, with geological-data exchange, modern mapping, exploration, separation, and processing now on the table. The strategic case is real; the geological case remains early. Armenia has documented rare-earth-bearing rocks, but the sources reviewed show no publicly disclosed, internationally compliant rare-earth resource or producing rare earth element (REE) mine. The May framework is also explicitly non-binding.
REEx Insight — Armenia May Be Worth More Than Its Ore
REEx warned in May in Armenia’s Rare Earth Gamble and Armenia Joins the Rare Earth Chessboard that Armenia’s near-term value was optionality, not proven rare-earth scale, and that modern mapping could matter before mining. The overlooked clause is the Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). The U.S.-Armenia framework explicitly links Armenia to critical-mineral transit from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, while prioritizing separation, refining, and value-added processing inside Armenia.
That creates a two-track thesis: test Armenian mineral systems for recoverable REE or critical-mineral byproducts while building a regional processing-and-logistics node that need not rely solely on Armenian ore. That is REEx inference, not a resource estimate. Grades, mineralogy, recoveries, capex, permitting, and offtake remain unanswered.
Four Decades of Geological Breadcrumbs
Work dating to 1989 at the Tezhsar alkaline complex identified more than 50 minerals, including allanite, monazite, xenotime, loparite, euxenite, and britholite. A 2011 Yerevan State University paper flagged Armenian nepheline syenites as REE-prospective; 2018 Lithos work characterized Tezhsar. A 2023 study proposed REE prospectivity in Meghri-pluton amphibolic gabbro; 2025 Lithos research found unusually LREE-enriched apatite at Abovyan. Interesting geology is not mineable tonnage.
USGS ranked Armenia sixth globally in molybdenum production in 2024; Kajaran, Agarak, and Teghout anchor its copper-molybdenum sector, while mining and quarrying contributed 3% of GDP. China received 76.6% of Armenian copper-concentrate exports. No REE mine production is reported.
The investor question is now sharper: can new mapping turn occurrences into economic resources—and can Armenia capture the processing margin? That is Great Powers Era 2.0™ in one sentence.
The principal citations supporting the Armenia/TRIPP research are:
1. Armenia–U.S. TRIPP Implementation Framework, Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 14, 2026. Official TRIPP framework
2. Armenia–U.S. Framework for Securing Supply in Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths, May 26, 2026. This is particularly important because it discusses exploration, processing, value addition, and mineral supply from the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Official Critical Minerals Framework
3. Armenia–U.S. TRIPP Framework Agreement, signed June 4, 2026. Public Radio of Armenia — TRIPP agreement signed
4. Armenia-U.S. TRIPP Development Company / DFC investment package, June 4, 2026. Useful for distinguishing the infrastructure initiative from a purely conceptual corridor. Public Radio of Armenia — TRIPP Development Company
5. Rare Earth Exchanges — “Armenia’s Rare Earth Gamble: Corridor Diplomacy Meets Great Power Competition.” REEx article
6. Rare Earth Exchanges — “Armenia Joins the Rare Earth Chessboard as Washington Expands Critical Mineral Hunt.” REEx article
7. For the broader Great Powers Era 2.0™ interpretation, this REEx piece is especially relevant: “Rare Earths and the New Geopolitical Center: How Central Asia and the Caucasus Are Rewriting the Map of Power.” REEx Great Powers Era 2.0 context
Imagine 1,000 young Armenian-American women standing together.
On a typical non-holiday Sunday, only about seven of them would be attending an Armenian church.
Approximately 993 would not.
That single image captures one of the most important challenges facing Armenian Christianity in America.
For generations, Armenian communities have invested enormous financial and human resources in churches, schools, cultural institutions, buildings, programs, and events. These institutions represent extraordinary accomplishments by generations determined to preserve their Christian faith and Armenian identity.
But preservation of institutions is not the same as participation in them.
Khachkar Studios’ research brings renewed attention to this distinction through its weekly Transparency, Accountability, and Performance framework – T•A•P.
The objective is not simply to ask whether Armenian churches remain open, whether budgets balance, or whether traditional programs continue.
The more important question is whether Armenians – particularly the next generation – are actually walking through church doors.
That question can and should be measured every week.
Weekly measurement changes the conversation because it converts general impressions about church participation into observable results.
How many people attended? How many were young? How many people were personally invited? How much outreach occurred outside church property? Which initiatives resulted in new attendance? Which did not?
Answers to these questions allow Armenian church leaders to learn while there is still time to act.
This is particularly important when the starting numbers are extraordinarily low.
Imagine 1,000 young Armenian-American women standing together. On a typical non-holiday Sunday, only about 7 would be attending an Armenian church. Approximately 993 would not.
That picture makes the challenge difficult to dismiss. The objective cannot simply be preserving institutions built by previous generations. It must be bringing a new generation into those institutions while there is still time.
Weekly T•A•P provides a way to determine whether that is happening.
Transparency makes participation visible. Accountability asks who is responsible for improving it. Performance determines whether activities and resources are producing measurable results.
None of these measures diminish the spiritual mission of the Armenian Church.
They help determine whether that mission is reaching people.
A church can possess a magnificent sanctuary, substantial assets, centuries of tradition, and dedicated leadership. But the future of Armenian Christianity ultimately depends upon people embracing and transmitting the faith.
That is why the 993 matter.
Each represents someone who might be reached, personally invited, welcomed, and ultimately become part of the Armenian Christian community.
The institutions previous generations built are an extraordinary inheritance.
The management challenge of this generation is filling them.
Speaking truth to power, Biblically inspired, world-class benchmarking and management excellence bring Transparency, Accountability, and Performance (T•A•P) to a power structure that has failed Armenian Christians for generations.
Gholipour: Iran needs concrete guarantees from Armenia on TRIPP, not just assurances
“It is entirely natural that Iran is concerned about the presence of its adversaries and enemies along its northern border,” Iranian expert Alireza Khoda Gholipour, Director General of the Center for Political and International Studies in Tehran, who has worked at Iran’s Foreign Ministry for many years, said on NEWS.am’s “Factor of Power” program, referring to Tehran’s concerns regarding the Trump Route (TRIPP) to be established in Syunik and the reasons behind them.
According to him, Iran’s leadership sees far-reaching goals behind TRIPP that pose a threat to their security.
“If they are sincere and honestly want to implement this project with positive goals – to ensure stability, prosperity and development in the region, to solve the problems of the countries of the region – then you welcome it. But I doubt that this is their real intention.
“After the aggression carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran, Iran’s perception of threats has changed, and our security concerns have deepened even further. Therefore, it is entirely natural that Iran is concerned about the presence of its adversaries and enemies near its borders. Iran cannot accept and tolerate this. If something happens that will put Iran’s security at risk, we will not leave it unanswered,” the Iranian expert said.
In response to the question of why Iran’s concerns have still not been dispelled, if the Armenian government is constantly assuring that no threat to Iran will arise if TRIPP is implemented, Gholipour emphasized that they need not merely verbal assurances, but specific guarantees.
“We need guarantees. The Armenian government, as you mentioned, has always assured the Iranian side that it will not allow third parties to use its territory against Iran or any other country in the region. This is very natural, and we are very grateful for that. But there must be guarantees on which this is based,” he said.
Gholipour emphasized that, whatever happens, Iran will not accept a change in the internationally recognized borders of the region.
“Iran will not accept the blocking, alteration or severing of the connection between Iran and Armenia. I mean the 44-kilometer border that we have with Armenia. Iran will not allow harm to be caused to its transit significance,” Gholipour stressed.
YEREVAN, Armenia, Sept. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Thirty-five years after independence, Armenia’s first generation of entrepreneursis reaching the point of exits and succession, and the capital they built is looking for institutional management. On the occasion of the anniversary, Armenpress, the country’s official news agency, interviewed Irina Belysheva, CEO of Wilco Wealth Management, about Armenia as a jurisdiction for capital.
Belysheva explains that for three decades, private wealth in Armenia was inseparable from operating businesses: “For a long time, wealth accumulation followed a familiar cycle: profits were either immediately funneled back into company growth or left in classic bank deposits, rather than being treated as an independent institutional asset class.”
That model is now changing. A new generation is stepping in: mobile, doing business across several jurisdictions, and approaching risk management and asset structuring differently.
She sees advantages in Armenia’s wealth management industry being relatively young. Unlike mature financial centers, it can be shaped without entrenched legacy systems and thus be more agile and technology-enabled. A compact market further enables an open, professional dialogue between the regulator and the industry, allowing for swift adaptation and continuous refinement of legislation.
Belysheva also highlights Armenia’s growing role as a connector between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as the country integrates into transport corridors such as the North-South route and regional initiatives including the TRIPP project. As capital seeks diversification, she notes, international investors view jurisdictions as balancing points within broader global portfolios.
Regarding the diaspora, Belysheva argues that support based mainly on charity has reached its natural limits. Younger generations increasingly look at Armenia as investors, guided by what she calls “market return plus real impact.” Such investors are ready to commit capital when they see promising opportunities, transparent corporate governance and robust protection of their rights.
She also cautions against copying Western family governance templates: “In our region, business is inextricably tied to personal relationships, respect for older generations, and the unwritten division of roles. Succession mechanisms cannot simply be copied out of a foreign textbook.”
The interview also openly addresses the gaps. Armenia’s banking sector is liquid and well capitalized, with assets reaching roughly 112% of GDP, yet the local stock and corporate bond markets remain small. She notes that the Government’s 2026-2031 Program prioritizes capital market development.
For Belysheva, the key test of the next decade is helping businesses lengthen their planning horizons, so that long-term capital stays in the domestic economy.
Belysheva describes Wilco’s role as that of “a reliable co-pilot” for Armenian founders and families: connecting Armenian capital with global markets and helping foreign and diaspora capital come to Armenia.
The full interview is available at: st1yle=”box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px 0px 30px;letter-spacing:0.1px;font-size:16px;line-height:32px;color:rgb(53,73,94);font-family:Roboto,Arial,sans-serif;word-break:break-word”>Wilco LLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Armenia. This material does not constitute an investment recommendation.
Notes to editors About Wilco Wealth Management Wilco Wealth Management (Wilco LLC) is an investment and wealth management firm headquartered in Yerevan, Armenia, regulated by the Central Bank of Armenia.
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Yerevan has reiterated its position on the Western Sahara dispute while signaling interest in deepening political and economic ties with Rabat.
byHanane Afeznaoui
Agadir – Armenia has reaffirmed its support for Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for the Western Sahara, describing it as a realistic political solution and linking it to the strengthening of Morocco’s territorial integrity.
The position was reiterated during a meeting in New York between Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita and his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
According to Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mirzoyan recalled a letter sent by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to King Mohammed VI in July, in which Pashinyan expressed Armenia’s support for Morocco’s initiative on the Sahara.
“We attach particular importance to the Moroccan initiative on the Sahara issue submitted to the UN in April 2007, considering it a realistic political solution,” Pashinyan said in the letter.
He added that UN Security Council Resolution 2797, adopted on October 31, 2025, represented a milestone and would pave the way for strengthening Morocco’s territorial integrity and promoting peaceful coexistence and prosperity in the region.
The Armenian prime minister also described relations between Armenia and Morocco as warm and friendly, noting that the two countries have significant potential to further develop their ties.
The meeting also focused on strengthening relations between Yerevan and Rabat.
“The Ministers discussed opportunities for further development of relations between Armenia and Morocco, emphasizing the mutual political willingness to forge closer ties between the two countries,” Armenia’s Foreign Ministry added in its statement released today.
Mirzoyan and Bourita discussed expanding the countries’ bilateral legal framework and organizing high-level visits.
They also exchanged views on mechanisms to promote trade and economic ties, as well as cooperation within multilateral platforms and regional developments.