A meeting of the leaderships of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Kremlin on January 11, exactly two months after the ceasefire in the 44-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, can be seen as a robust push by Moscow to consolidate its diplomatic achievement. The ceasefire has gained traction and this is the opportune moment for Russia to…
A very strong antagonism opposes the government of Sheikh Hassan Rohani to the Revolutionary Guards. The latter are not placed under his orders, but depend directly on the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. President Rohani’s project: capitalism and regional imperialism Sheikh Rohani is a member of the Shiite clergy, like Ayatollah Khamenei, but not the…
President Recep Tayyip Erdoganushered in the new year, pledging to employ his country’s military to secureTurkey’s place in a rebalanced new world order. Mr. Erdogan spelledout his vision when he inserted himself on December 30 into anaddress by his defense minister, Hulusi Akar, to several hundred masked Turkishand Azeri military officers in the Azerbaijani capital…
Turkey is leveraging its successful backing of Azerbaijan’s recent war against Armenia to counter Iran in the Caucasus and gradually challenge Russia in Central Asia, the heart of what Moscow considers its backyard. The Turkish moves have elicited different responses from Russia and Iran, two countries Turkey views as both partners and rivals. Turkish President…
Populated at the time by fluent Hebrew speakers, the Israel desk of Armenia’s foreign ministry waited back in 1991— in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union—for a phone call that never came. The ministry was convinced that Israel, with whom Armenia shared an experience of genocide, were natural allies. The ministry…
President Erdogan’s recitation of a 19th-century Azeri nationalist poem during his attendance at Baku’s Victory Parade as his Azerbaijani counterpart’s guest of honor last week provoked harsh criticism from Iranian officials who regarded it as implying territorial claims on their country’s three northwestern provinces that form part of the historic Azerbaijan region (which also naturally…
