This is the thirtieth weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Azerbaijan & Armenia
In the time since Azerbaijan fully reconquered Nagorno-Karabakh, there have been worries that they would proceed to invade Armenia proper as well. Those worries did not seem to materialize at first, and the two countries even began peace negotiations. However, Azerbaijan has now reiterated an earlier claim to 8 Armenian villages which it considers “under occupation.”
However, a few days later [the BBC reported that peace negotiations(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67655940) are continuing:
Hasn’t Iran pledged to defend the territorial integrity of Armenia proper?
Iran’s relationship with the situation is super tricky. Historically they were allied with Armenia while Azerbaijan bought weapons from Israel. But potentially as much as a quarter of Iran is ethnically Azeri, with a ton of them living right next to the border. A lot of them are really well integrated (people say the Ayatollah may be half Azeri) but there’s also been an issue of growing Azeri nationalism within Iran.
The last President Rouhani made it a major initiative to try to douse those fires, campaigned in Azeri towns a lot, allowed their language to be taught in schools, and reestablished diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan to keep them from fanning the flames of Turkish pan nationalism right over the border. He even switched Iran’s position and formally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
Iran has a huge vested interest in stability in the region. They still have their historic ties with Armenia and they really don’t want the Zangezur Corridor to be built and unite Azerbaijan and Turkey and cut them off from Armenia. This is all the more pressing because that could jeopardize their access to the north-south transit corridor through the caucuses that they’ve heavily invested in (the highway section in Armenia is being built by Iranian companies). At the same time, Iran is super not happy about Armenia’s deepening ties with the US or the presence of US troops in the area or American influence over the outcome.
So Iran has said “they won’t tolerate any border changes”. But all the same constraints that forced them to make nice with Azerbaijan are still at play, so it’s hard to say exactly how free they have to intervene. With the conflict in Israel keeping up their focus and repeated clashes between their proxies in Iraq and the US, I also imagine they really don’t want another conflict to potentially get wrapped up in.
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