Pietro A.
Shakarian
It was only a
few weeks ago that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Iranian President
Masoud Pezeshkian met to ink the historic Russo-Iranian Treaty on Comprehensive
Strategic Partnership. The pact itself
was a milestone, so much so that commentators around the world are still widely
discussing its implications. Perhaps one
of the most striking elements of the treaty is the major focus on Eurasia. Although Western analysts tend to focus on
Russo-Iranian cooperation in the Middle East, the treaty indicates that Eurasia
is of even more immediate geopolitical significance to both Moscow and
Tehran. To historians and long-time
observers of Iran and Russia, this is hardly a surprise. The Eurasian region – that is, the Caucasus,
Central Asia, and the Caspian Sea – forms an integral part of the common
Russo-Iranian neighborhood.
For the security
of both countries, the Caucasus region in particular is especially critical.
Defined by its protective mountainous geography and central location between
the Black and Caspian seas, the area has long played a major role in the
security architecture of both Russia and Iran.
This major geostrategic significance has certainly not been lost on the
current Russian leadership, and President Putin in particular. From the defeat of Islamist terrorists in
Chechnya to the success of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Caucasus has
always held an especially important place in Moscow’s geopolitical outlook.
Sochi in particular has served as a standard for Russian revival following the
freefall of the Yeltsin years. The
region is no less significant to Iran and has always served as a critical
security and commercial link for successive Iranian leaders, dating back to the
age of Cyrus the Great and his Achaemenid Empire. In this regard, President
Pezeshkian’s native Iranian Azerbaijan played a particularly vital role in
facilitating Iran’s historic connections with the Caucasus, linking the area to
the great trade routes of the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Silk
Road.
Thus, it is
hardly a surprise that the Caucasus continues to be a major strategic priority
for both Moscow and Tehran. For the
Kremlin, its importance is second only to Ukraine and has been amplified at a
time when Western political leaders have called for a “strategic defeat” of
Russia. Especially important for both
Tehran and Moscow are the three independent former Soviet republics of the
South Caucasus, or Transcaucasia – Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. These
countries have been of particular interest to war hawks, neoconservative
intellectuals, and big energy interests in Washington and London for decades.
All of these groups hold an especially strong desire to realize a Trans-Caspian
gas pipeline. The aim is to use the Caucasus as a bridgehead to access the
energy riches of post-Soviet Central Asia, as a means of “containing” Russia,
Iran, and ultimately, China. Israel –
and especially the hard-right of the Israeli political elite – has likewise
long held interests in the region, with an eye toward using post-Soviet
Azerbaijan as an instrument against Iran’s territorial integrity. Baku regularly receives generous military aid
from Tel Aviv in exchange for sending oil to Israel, all while keeping
conspicuously mum on the atrocities against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Azerbaijan’s closest ally, Turkey, is another
major player interested in weakening Russian and Iranian influence in Caucasia.
In fact, NATO has delegated to Ankara the task of projecting Western influence
into the region, given that Turkey is the one alliance member in closest
proximity to the Caucasus. Ankara
pursues this task alongside its own interests, which nevertheless correspond
with those of NATO.
From Tbilisi to
Yerevan
In the current
geopolitical configuration, the one country in the Caucasus that is quickly
emerging as the most reliable for both Moscow and Tehran is, perhaps
surprisingly, Georgia. Once upon a time,
Georgia, under its erstwhile president Mikheil “Misha” Saakashvili, was the
darling of the American neoconservative movement. This love affair reached its peak in 2008,
when the Bush administration encouraged the bungling Misha into a failed
crusade against the breakaway region of South Ossetia. In the end, Saakashvili was handed a
resounding defeat, first by Russia in the 2008 war, and then by the Georgian
people in 2012, with the ascendancy of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream
party. Although Tbilisi today still officially
voices aspirations for NATO and the EU, it has de facto diversified its foreign
policy, maximizing Georgian independence by opening up the country to greater
cooperation with Russia, Iran, and, most significantly, China. An attempted
Western-backed “Maidan” in Tbilisi ended in failure in 2024 and only brought
Georgia closer to Moscow and Tehran. Nevertheless, full reconciliation between
Tbilisi and Moscow has yet to be achieved, and Georgia’s conflicts with the
breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain unresolved.
Moscow and
Tehran face much greater challenges in their relations with Armenia and
Azerbaijan. A member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Armenia
once served as the unquestioned bedrock of the geopolitical security
architecture for both Russia and Iran in the Caucasus. However, since his arrival in office,
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has actively worked to undermine this
historical position. Pashinyan came to
power in what was effectively an NGO-instigated “color revolution” in 2018,
just as the incumbent Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan began implementing a
plan of military modernization. Although Pashinyan and his team insisted that
their “revolution” had “no geopolitical context,” they have actively worked to
undermine Armenia’s national security architecture ever since.
Initially, the
supposed “populist” Armenian PM took the rhetorical position of a hardline
Armenian nationalist on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), a stance that
later proved to be less than sincere.
His talking points served to endanger the Karabakh Armenians by
provoking the 2020 war with Ilham Aliyev’s Azerbaijan. At the same time, Pashinyan dismissed some of
Armenia’s best military commanders and willfully ignored all warnings of an
impending war from his own military, as well as from Russia and the CSTO.
Pashinyan poorly managed the war itself, while Azerbaijan gained the upper
hand, with extensive support from Turkey and NATO. Had it not been for major Russian diplomatic
pressure, Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh would have fallen completely to Azerbaijan
already in November 2020. However, as
subsequent events have clearly shown, losing Nagorno-Karabakh was Pashinyan’s
intention all along.
The resulting
November statement of 2020 effectively “froze” the Karabakh conflict along new
lines that were severely disadvantageous not only for Armenia, but also for
Russia and Iran. Russian peacekeepers,
together with the Karabakh Armenian self-defense forces, were left in control
of a dramatically weakened, amoeba-like Nagorno-Karabakh. Lost to Azerbaijani control was the historic
city of Shushi as well as the Hadrut district and a broad overland link to
Armenia via the districts of Kelbajar and Lachin, leaving a single road – the
Lachin corridor – as Nagorno-Karabakh’s sole lifeline to Yerevan. Districts that Karabakh Armenian forces had
controlled along the Iranian-Azerbaijani border were also lost, and Baku wasted
no time in providing Israel access to these strategic areas overlooking Iran’s
northern provinces. On the eve of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia
sought to dissuade Aliyev from provoking further clashes. However, no Russian
concessions could stop Aliyev from his determined effort to undermine the
tenuous peace.
For his part,
the pro-Western Pashinyan was already eyeing the possibilities of using the new
geopolitical outcomes of 2020 to push Russia and Iran out of the region. Almost
too conveniently, Aliyev provided Pashinyan with the perfect excuse to fully
“break” from the Russian embrace. In
September 2022, Azerbaijan launched an all-out attack on Armenia proper. Given Russia’s focus on Ukraine, the response
from Moscow and the CSTO could only be of a limited nature, but Pashinyan,
being Pashinyan, took full advantage of these circumstances to blame Russia and
the CSTO for “abandoning” Armenia. Only
one month later, the Armenian PM, with no consultation from Armenian voters or
the Armenian public, moved to promptly recognize the entirety of
Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan in the Prague statement of October 2022.
Pashinyan’s unprecedented act of national betrayal enabled Aliyev’s subsequent
blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, culminating in Baku’s full ethnic cleansing of
the Karabakh Armenian population in September 2023. Conveniently for the Armenian PM, it also
resulted in Baku’s arrest of major Karabakh Armenian political figures,
including Pashinyan rival Ruben Vardanyan.
Since that time,
Pashinyan has openly declared his intention to move Armenia toward the US and
the EU. However, much like Saakashvili at the end of his tenure in Georgia, the
Armenian PM has faced a series of opposition protests, including a recent movement
led by an Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Although Armenia has yet
to reach its “Ivanishvili moment,” Pashinyan’s popularity has plummeted, and
the vast majority of Armenians remain sympathetic to Russia and Iran. Thus,
Pashinyan’s plot to pivot to the West has only further eroded his standing in
Armenian society as social discontent continues to grow. Most recently, the Armenian PM’s
controversial remarks calling into question the 1915 Armenian Genocide have
prompted strong rebukes and condemnations, both in Armenia and in the Armenian
Diaspora.
Militarism,
Chauvinism, Instability
In the larger
regional view, the progressive weakening of Armenia under Pashinyan has led to
a relative strengthening of the positions of NATO, Turkey, and Israel at
Russian and Iranian expense. Moreover,
Aliyev’s ability to achieve successive “victories” by military aggression
without any consequence makes the prospect of any lasting peace between the
peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan much more distant. Virtually nobody in Armenia, aside from
Pashinyan and his government, perceives Azerbaijan’s hostile takeover of
Nagorno-Karabakh and its subsequent ethnic cleansing as a legitimate form of
“conflict resolution.” As far as the
Azerbaijani government is concerned, the use of military force has been
legitimized and is now perceived by Baku as preferable to dialogue and
diplomacy. Thus, rather than promoting
peace in the Caucasus, the recent “victories” of Azerbaijan have only
emboldened Baku to press its advantage, by laying claim to the strategic
southern Armenian province of Syunik.
Even more ambitiously, official Baku has also laid claim to the entire
Armenian Republic itself as “Western Azerbaijan.” The claims do not stop with
Armenia. Historical Iranian Azerbaijan is claimed by Baku as “Southern
Azerbaijan,” with not-so-subtle encouragement from Israel.
To long-time
observers of the Caucasus, the ambitiously aggressive agenda of Aliyev is a
hardly a surprise. Enabled by a good dose of “caviar diplomacy” and Western
“expert neutrality,” Aliyev’s regime has long promoted national hatred to the
level of a state ideology. From a young age, schoolchildren in Azerbaijan are
taught to hate the “Armenian enemy,” while the books of Azeri authors calling
for dialogue with their Armenian neighbors are burned in Baku. In the exclave
of Nakhichevan, the khachkars (stone crosses) of the medieval Armenian cemetery
at Djulfa (Jugha), which had stood for centuries untouched, were turned to dust
in a matter of years by the sledgehammers of Aliyev’s army. The scene was caught on camera by
eyewitnesses in Iran and was described as a “crime” by Mikhail Piotrovsky, the
director of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The seeming ease with which
Aliyev’s government destroyed Djulfa’s centuries-old cemetery raises serious
concern about the fate of historical monuments in now-Azerbaijani-controlled
Nagorno-Karabakh. More ominously, it
also calls to mind the words of Heinrich Heine, which in this case, one might
paraphrase as “where they destroy monuments, they will also ultimately destroy
people.”
The
destabilizing force of such state-backed chauvinism is matched only by Aliyev’s
newfound hubris in his relations with Russia and Iran, as his attitude on the
Caspian plane incident recently demonstrated.
The proposal to run the Russo-Iranian north-south pipeline through
Azerbaijan therefore runs the risk of further empowering, rather than subduing,
Baku. This risk will make alternative
routes of north-south connectivity, such as through Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan, much more attractive to Moscow and Tehran.
Preventing a
“Second Syria” in the Caucasus
The ethnic
cleansing of the Karabakh Armenians – historically one of the most pro-Russian
populations in the Caucasus – was predictably met with a muted response in the
West. Privately, however, neoconservatives in Washington were giddy with
delight. The visible weakening of
Armenia and the strengthening of Azerbaijan via Turkey, NATO, and Israel
prompted strong protests from Tehran. Iranian leaders expressed particular
concern that Russia was being too cautious and too restrained in its policy
toward the region. Yet, despite Russia’s reserved official reaction, the
concern was also palpable in Moscow. Indeed, as Putin himself likely knows, the
historical weakening of Armenia had in the past played a crucial role in the
demise of Russia’s spiritual and political predecessor, the Byzantine Empire.
Tehran’s vocal concerns thus served to bring Russia and Iran even closer
together and reflected the degree to which Pashinyan had undermined the
region’s long-standing security architecture. Earlier, when the more reliable
Serzh Sargsyan was in office in Yerevan, neither Moscow nor Tehran felt
compelled to get so directly involved in Transcaucasian affairs.
The recent fall
of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, orchestrated jointly by Ankara, Tel Aviv, and
Washington, has further underscored the need for coordination between Moscow
and Tehran to prevent a similar scenario in the Caucasus. At the center of such a potential scenario is
Armenia’s southern Syunik province, known in Baku and Ankara as the “Zangezur
corridor.” This highly strategic province is the only overland link between
Iran and the EAEU and, if seized by Baku and Ankara, would provide NATO with
direct access to the Caspian Sea, a point not lost on Tehran. This critical link is now threatened both by
Pashinyan’s pro-EU overtures and Aliyev’s threats of military aggression. Ironically, both Baku and Yerevan are
strikingly aligned in their apparent desire to cut off Iran from Russia, a
dynamic that is compounded by the fact that both states have aligned themselves
with anti-Russian and anti-Iranian interests. However, if Aliyev and Pashinyan
are hoping for passive acceptance by Moscow and Tehran of “new regional
realities,” then they are making a very serious miscalculation. As Article 12
of the Russo-Iranian partnership pact underscores, Russia and Iran will never
tolerate a “second Syria” in the Caucasus.
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