Here’s the full version of the interview that I gave to Azerbaijan’s ARB Media, brief excerpts of which were included in their broadcast on 28 January.
1. Despite the EU’s efforts, a peace agreement was not signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia last year. Expectations are high this year. However, Armenia asked the EU to send a new monitoring mission. A mission group of 200 people will soon arrive at the Azerbaijan-Armenia border. Russia does not want to accept this. Could the new mission be a new front against Russia?
The EU, fully backed by the US which successfully reasserted its unipolar hegemony over that bloc across the past year, is acting as the tip of the West’s spear against Russia in the South Caucasus through this mission.
They’re exploiting the combination of pro-Western Color Revolutionary Pashinyan continuing to rule the country, he and his team remaining under the influence of hyper-nationalist members of the diaspora (specifically those from Los Angeles and Paris), and society’s increasing pressure upon the authorities to tangibly do something to delay their inevitable loss over the rest of Karabakh that’s still occupied by their forces.
Pashinyan, due to his past as a pro-Western Color Revolutionary who rose to power on anti-Russian rhetoric and remains influenced by the hyper-nationalist Western diaspora, has become displeased with Russia since Moscow refuses to be manipulated through propaganda into violating international law by militarily supporting Armenia’s UNSC-condemned occupation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region.
For that reason, he’s been drifting closer to the West since Yerevan’s loss in the latest war despite Russia diplomatically intervening to prevent Armenia’s total humiliation at the time in the hopes of encouraging it to agree to a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.
It’s against these military, political, and strategic contexts that the US-backed EU “monitoring mission” is being deployed, which thus very strongly suggests that it’s driven primarily by anti-Russian intentions related to “poaching” (at least still nominally) CSTO-member Armenia from what the West considers to be Moscow’s “sphere of influence”.
2. But whose support does Armenia need? Russia, the West or the European Union?
The West is setting Armenia up to fail for the purpose of provoking yet another regional conflict that it hopes will complicate Russia’s interests in the South Caucasus, lead to their further erosion, and eventually see Russian influence replaced by Western influence.
Russia, by contrast, sincerely wants to prevent another conflict that Armenia is guaranteed to lose and that’s why it diplomatically intervened to avert its CSTO ally’s total humiliation during the last conflict in the hopes that this would encourage it to finally agree to a peace treaty with Azerbaijan.
The EU is also interested in replacing Russian influence in Armenia in order to then wield that entire country as a Damocles’ sword of Hybrid War for pressuring Azerbaijan into giving it preferential energy deals under potential pain of reigniting the Karabakh Conflict.
What the Ukrainian Conflict has thus far shown is that even a militarily devastated country can still continue putting up a fight as long as it has an entire alliance resupplying and training its forces like NATO is doing for Ukraine.
Along the same lines, the scenario of the West plotting something similar against Azerbaijan via Armenia sometime in the future if it successfully replaces Russian influence there can’t be discounted, though it admittedly remains unlikely in the near term.
3. What is needed for peace?
What’s needed for peace is a formal agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Yerevan remains reluctant to take any tangible steps in this direction because its leadership expects that the hyper-nationalist population that it represents and related elements within the security services would conspire to overthrow them.
Therein lies the crux of the problem since the narrow and short-term political self-interests of whoever is ruling Armenia at any given time have taken precedence over international law and the region’s wider and long-term economic interests.
Years of anti-Azerbaijani hatemongering have also resulted in what appears from afar at least to be the majority of Armenian society sincerely being against any peace agreement, which in turn exacerbates the threat of a Color Revolution against whichever leader might be brave enough to finally do this and thus facilitate the coup efforts of related hyper-nationalist elements within the security services.
Frankly speaking, Armenia found itself in a dilemma entirely of its own making whereby it’s forced to face serious domestic unrest if its leader signs any peace agreement or risk another conflict that it’s doomed to lose if it continues indefinitely delaying this inevitability.
The most responsible course of action from the present Armenian leadership would be to calmly explain how dire the situation so that sincerely patriotic folks can better understand why it’s in everyone’s interests to turn the page on this conflict as soon as possible so that they can all finally start building a better future for the region.
In parallel, coup-inclined hyper-nationalist elements within the security services must be identified and politically neutralized while also curtailing the influence that foreign-funded “NGOs” backed by the disruptive diaspora and their Western governments (mostly the US but also France in this context) have over society.
Without this three-step plan — a calm public relations campaign about why a peace agreement is inevitable in order to improve everyone’s lives; politically neutralizing coup-inclined elements within the security services; and doing the same for foreign-funded “NGOs” — Armenia likely won’t sign a peace agreement anytime soon or would risk tremendous domestic unrest if it does.
4. How will the recent terrorist act in Tehran against the Azerbaijani Embassy affect the relations between the two countries? Why are embassies located in Iran poorly protected? And how should it actually be?
What took place Friday was indisputably a terrorist attack though the details about it remain unclear.
For what it’s worth, an Iranian official claimed that it was motivated by a personal grievance and not part of a larger group or plot.
For that reason, the incident likely won’t have any effect on bilateral relations.
After all, it’s impossible to perfectly protect everyone from such terrorist attacks such as the one that just happened.
Nevertheless, there might be some who ask questions about the level of security provided by the host state outside that diplomatic facility as well as speculate about the terrorist’s true motives.
They, however, aren’t expected to influence the course of Azerbaijani-Iranian relations unless in the unlikely event that Baku lodges official protests against Tehran on those bases.
Brief excerpts from this interview were included in ARB Media’s broadcast from 28 January beginning at 11:50 and can be watched in full here.