World News

This should be understood as a move to counter Turkey and perhaps coax Armenia closer to alignment with Israel.

There are two recently emerging factions in the vicinity. One has India, the UAE, Ethiopia, Greece, Israel and their dependents whereas the opposing block has Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (which was originally with the UAE since they helped the military coup but flipped over Ethiopia and Gaza), Turkey, Qatar and their dependents. Both have also had elements opposed to the existing Iranian block although recently the group with Turkey and Pakistan and so on has been promoting peace with Iran and trying to make a ceasefire while Israel & the UAE want Trump on the ground there.

The faction Turkey is in generally wants to support Islamist leaning governments like the recognized governments of Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, at this point basically kind of a support of the status quo. Whereas the other faction has problems with governments like that and generally want to either flip the ideologies of those states to something less religious (ex. supporting Arab supremacist RSF over Islamist-leaning SAF in Sudan, or the UAE-backed military coup against the elected MB government in Egypt) or to split off smaller fragments from them by smaller nationalisms or sectarian issues (ex. backing the South Yemen separatists before Saudi Arabia rolled over them or Somaliland to become independent from Somalia).

If Armenia is drawn in then that would help Israel to contain Turkey somewhat since it would have Greece to the west, Armenia to the east and Israel to the south past the Turkish aligned government of Syria. That said it would be a rough road to swaying Armenia because Israel has previously heavily supported Azerbaijan since both countries were heavily against Iran, and Israel has not been treating the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem well. But, it does have good relations with other members of the faction such as buying a huge number of weapons from India and I think the UAE just cut a sweet economic deal with Armenia.

One thing I think will be interesting is how this develops with Azerbaijan and Iran. Obviously, Azerbaijan is cold on the matter of the Armenian genocide because some of the Armenians fleeing the genocide into Russian controlled lands organized militias that saw Azeris as the same as the Turks who killed them and began fighting with them. These militias quickly established on both sides began ethnic cleansing each other and started the ball rolling on ethnic polarization and converting previously mixed areas to monoethnic ones. Also Enver Pasha, a great villain of the Armenian Genocide, is actually seen way better in Azerbaijan than even Turkey because the Islamic Army of the Caucasaus that he established and his brother commanded rolled back the Dashnak and Bolshevik forces responsible for massacres against Azeris like the March Days up until they were forced to turn back when the Turkish capital at Istanbul got exposed and surrendered following Bulgaria’s capitulation. Even as they were leaving they armed local Muslim militias which put them on a better footing than they would have been, so such figures are regarded positively in Azerbaijan’s history although they are reviled elsewhere.

On between Iran and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan has been very staunchly secular and heavy-handed in response to Iranian preaching in its country as Aliyev detailed in Wikileaks cables (he’s on the record in the Bush era as saying that the country “would end” if even a small number of more traditionally religious Azeris come as refugees from Iran as a reason for not wanting a hypothetical war against Iran to start) and since they both were hostile to Iran Azerbaijan bought many weapons from Israel while building up the military after it was soundly defeated in the first NK war. In the Wikileaks cables Aliyev was very suspicious of Erdogan and did not seem to have a good relation at all to start with because he considered him to be too religious. But it seems their partnership has grown far stronger since then. Something interesting recently was that despite the partnership with Israel, Azerbaijan seems to have only been struck by one missile from Iran, which Iran promptly claimed was actually not from them when Azerbaijan bristled at it. That’s nothing compared to the barrage fired at many of the other neighbors despite arguably having more justification. Perhaps a thaw is occurring between the two behind the scenes, maybe facilitated by Turkey and Pakistan’s roles in trying to secure a ceasefire. On the flip side, if Armenia becomes perceived as getting closer ties to Israel, that could be viewed as hostile to Iran if that happens which could possibly make their traditionally positive relations grow more cold.

A surprising web of politics can go into a simple recognition of history.