Iran and Russia denounced European and American interventionism in tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia on Monday – at the highest level since Baku’s reconquest of the Nagorno-Karabakh region – during a meeting in Tehran intended to find a way out without the Westerners.
At the same time, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense announced on Monday the start of military maneuvers held with Turkey near Armenia, which fears that neighboring Azerbaijan wants to encroach on its territory.
Meeting with the heads of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Turkish diplomacy, the Iranian and Russian foreign ministers displayed their understanding in Tehran to show that, according to them, they do not need Westerners to resolve regional tensions. “The region’s problems cannot be resolved by the intervention of foreign forces,” declared Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi, his services said. “The presence of foreigners in the region not only does not solve the problems, but complicates the situation,” added its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
At the end of the discussions, his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, also denounced “attempts on the part of, first of all, the EU, and, to a certain extent, the United States, to interfere in the process of demarcation” of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In a final joint declaration, the participants in the meeting recalled “the importance of the peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity […]non-interference in internal affairs.
Sergei Lavrov, who also spoke face-to-face with President Raïssi, also assured that the door remained “open” to another country in the region, Georgia, absent on Monday, and that a future meeting was planned in Turkey “around the first half of next year”.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have a tenacious hatred for each other, and tensions rose sharply with the lightning military reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan at the end of September, when the region had been in the hands of around thirty years. Armenian separatists. Almost the entire population — more than 100,000 people out of the 120,000 officially recorded — fled to Armenia.
Before that, Azerbaijan and Armenia had opposed each other during two wars for control of this mountainous enclave, one in the 1990s, at the dislocation of the USSR, the other in the fall of 2020, won by Baku.
Armenia now fears that its neighbor, richer, better armed and supported by Turkey, is seeking to push its advantage. She is particularly afraid that Azerbaijan will be tempted to connect the Nakhichevan enclave by force to the rest of its territory by attacking southern Armenian regions.
During a press conference on Monday, the head of Iranian diplomacy said that Tehran hoped to “establish lasting peace in the South Caucasus region” through “a peace agreement between Baku and Yerevan as quickly as possible.
Military maneuvers
Earlier in the day, however, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced the holding of military maneuvers in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan, bordering Armenia and Iran, as well as in “liberated territories”, including The location was not specified and could refer to Nagorno-Karabakh or adjoining Azerbaijani districts.
Turkey, a supporter of Azerbaijan, and Russia, considered an ally of Armenia, play a major role in the region. But the recent offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh has reshuffled the cards. Yerevan accused Moscow of abandoning it by failing to stop Baku’s forces, criticisms Russia rejected.
In search of protection, Armenia therefore seems ready to turn more towards the West. This country, for example, ratified its membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in mid-October, which it hopes will be an additional shield against the potential ambitions of Azerbaijan. A gesture viewed very negatively by Moscow, the ICC having issued an arrest warrant in the spring against President Vladimir Putin for the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia, a decision that Moscow considers “null and no avenue.”