In one of my previous articles “Iran and the Second Artsakh War: Has Tehran lost its leverage over the South Caucasus?” I argued that from a geopolitical and geo-economic point of view, Iran lost its influence in the region after the 2020 war.
I wanted to write about this a long time ago, even before the war. But the Artsakh War, its devastating outcome on the Armenian nation and its political ideology pushed me to raise some provocative questions and arguments. What kind of Artsakh do
Back in July, Rich Outzen published a policy paper “Deals, Drones and National Will: The New Era in Turkish Power Projection” in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy highlighting the new strategy of the Turkish Armed Forces, the development of the arms
Caretaker PM Nikol Pashinyan and his party’s euphoria from election victory will soon disappear, since for them, the post-election period will be full of foreign policy challenges linked to the post-war regional dynamics in the South Caucasus. These challenges range from Armenia’s balancing
On June 15, 2021, during his visit to occupied Shushi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed the Shushi Declaration with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to cement “allied relations” between the two countries. The declaration consists of many important points including mutual defense guarantees and
The recent Azerbaijani border line encroachment towards Syunik should not surprise us at all. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s threats after the war over Artsakh to forcibly open a “corridor” connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Syunik, the role of Azerbaijani media in mobilizing its people for
On March 8, the Indian Ambassador to Iran Gaddam Dharmendra announced that India is planning on connecting the Chabahar port (a seaport in southeast Iran, heavily invested in by India) and the Indian Ocean with Eurasia and Helsinki through the territory of Armenia, creating an International
“NEVER, WITHOUT SYUNIK, WITHOUT THIS STRONG GEOGRAPHIC BACKBONE OF ARMENIA, OUR ENTIRE HOMELAND CANNOT EXIST.” — KAREKIN NJTEH Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is taking advantage of the domestic instability in Yerevan and once again using a threatening tone against Armenia. On the 6th
In his book “Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh and the Legacy of Soviet Nationalities Policy” (2012), Dr. Ohannes Geukjian analyzes how ethnicity and nationalism became a catalytic cause of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and how they have affected Armenian-Azerbaijani relations
Introduction When it comes to the South Caucasus, Iran is historically and geographically a crucial regional actor alongside Russia and Turkey. To assert its influence in the Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh conflict, Tehran had offered to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan on various occasions, but its