Wednesday, April 5 2023 13:13

ArmInfo.Stratfor, an American strategic intelligence publishing company, has published an article titled " Reassessing the Risk of an Escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh". 

The article is presented in full below, "As peace talks between  Armenia and Azerbaijan stall, violent flare-ups either in  Nagorno-Karabakh or on their common border are increasingly likely,  even if a large-scale Azerbaijani military operation or direct  Iranian involvement in the conflict remains unlikely. On March 30,  Azerbaijan's defense ministry said its soldiers had seized a number  of territories near the border with Armenia. Several days earlier,  the ministry also announced its units had taken ''necessary local  control measures'' to cut off an alternative dirt road that Armenians  had been using to access the Nagorno-Karabakh region amid  Azerbaijan's ongoing blockage of the Lachin Corridor's main road  connecting Armenia proper to the disputed territory. Armenian Foreign  Minister Ararat Mirzoyan had warned on March 22 that a rise in  ''sharp rhetoric and threats'' from Azerbaijan in recent days had  raised the risk of ''new aggression against Armenia and  Nagorno-Karabakh'' and ''ethnic cleansing.'' Azerbaijan's actions and  Armenia's warnings are the latest signs that bilateral tensions are  rising as the peace talks and enforcement of the two countries' 2020  cease-fire appear to have stalled. 

In a statement issued on March 25, Russia's defense ministry said  Azerbaijan had violated the cease-fire that ended the 2020 war in  Nagorno-Karabakh by crossing a line of contact, and asked Azerbaijani  troops to withdraw from the new positions they had taken along the  Armenian border.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has offered fluctuating  assessments in recent weeks regarding the state of negotiations and  the possibility for escalation amid the lack of apparent progress. At  a March 14 press conference, he said that the ''risk of escalation is  very high,'' adding that this conclusion was ''from Azerbaijan's  growing aggressive rhetoric, and of course other information,'' a  likely reference to reports of Azerbaijani military equipment  movements. But in a bid to emphasize that Azerbaijan would be  responsible for any provocations, Pashinyan also tweeted on March 25  that ''there will be a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan...  There won't be   new escalation! The international community must  strongly support this narrative.''

On March 19, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev warned that the ''one  condition for [Armenians] to live comfortably'' in Armenia is that  Yerevan ''must accept our conditions.'' He then repeated his threat  to not recognize Armenia's territorial integrity, a reference to the  possibility of Azerbaijan seizing parts of southern Armenia to  establish a land corridor to Azerbaijan's Naxcivan exclave. 

On Dec. 12, a group of Azerbaijanis blocked the road linking  Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia through the so-called Lachin Corridor.  Ten days later, Pashinyan said Russian peacekeepers' failure to  unblock the corridor violated Russia's 2020 cease-fire obligations.  Russian peacekeepers have been unwilling to forcibly remove the  Azerbaijanis, despite the fact that unobstructed movement on the road  is explicitly required in the deal. 

Recent events show that the negotiation process is at risk of losing  momentum, opening the possibility of renewed efforts by Azerbaijan to  demonstrate its leverage, including with force, which will likely  eventually kickstart diplomatic progress. On Feb. 16, Armenian Prime  Minister Pashinyan announced that his country had presented  Azerbaijan with the latest draft of a comprehensive peace treaty. Two  days later, Azerbaijan then removed a sticking point in negotiations  by offering to allow checkpoints on the proposed Zangezur transit  corridor through Armenia in exchange for checkpoints on the Lachin  Corridor. Armenia will not accept an adjustment to the terms of the  Lachin Corridor unless it comes as part of the implementation of a  comprehensive peace deal.  However, Azerbaijan's offer nonetheless  constituted progress, as topics such as regional transit corridors  and border demarcation are now largely matters of technical details,  leaving the future of Nagorno-Karabakh as the primary obstacle to a  peace deal. Further diplomatic progress, however, has faltered since  Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Aliyev's  last meeting on Feb. 18, and it's unclear when the leaders (or other  high-ranking officials from the two countries) will next meet. So  long as talks appear stalled, Azerbaijan will likely turn to  small-scale violations of the cease-fire to seize tactically  advantageous areas in Nagorno-Karabakh, or similar actions along the  Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Baku has used this strategy on multiple  occasions since the cease-fire was signed in November 2020 to force  diplomatic progress by simultaneously demonstrating and increasing  its leverage.

In separate phone calls with Pashinyan and Aliyev on March 20 and  March 21, respectively, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken  offered continued U.S. assistance in facilitating bilateral peace  discussions amid rumors of escalating tensions. 

The deadliest recent major escalation occurred in September 2022,  when over 100 Armenian soldiers were killed after Azerbaijani troops  occupied a section of the undemarcated border. Pashinyan appealed to  trigger the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Article 4  mutual defense clause to restore Armenia's territorial integrity from  Azerbaijani encroachment and to ensure the withdrawal of Azerbaijani  troops. But the Russia-led alliance failed to respond in a meaningful  way. 

Despite its recent aggressive actions, Azerbaijan remains unlikely to  launch a large-scale military operation to seize large swaths of new  territory in Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia, as less costly methods can  enable Baku to maintain progress toward its goals.  Each time  Azerbaijani forces gain ground, it improves their tactical position -  even if those territorial gains only move the de facto line of  contact by a matter of meters. Such maneuvers also increase the  Azerbaijani government's negotiating leverage by making the threat of  a large military operation more potent. Compared with large  territorial seizures, this strategy enables Azerbaijan to continue  gaining ground and increasing its leverage - all without the risk of  triggering another full-blown war with Armenia, as well as  international condemnation (and likely sanctions). Baku thus has  little incentive to attempt a military operation to seize most or all  of the remaining territory in Nagorno- Karabakh, and/or an operation  to seize portions of southern Armenia. Moreover, Azerbaijan has  little interest in unnecessarily jeopardizing a peace deal likely to  be largely in its favor. Despite Armenia's efforts to flex its  relations with countries including Russia, the United States, the  European Union and even Turkey through the ongoing normalization  processes, it is very unlikely that Yerevan will be able to secure  any sort of foreign partnership capable of seriously undermining  Azerbaijan's leverage. This means that Azerbaijan does not see a  large-scale invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia as a  time-sensitive necessity, despite its public suggestions to the  contrary. 

The recent deployment of EU monitors on Armenia's side of the border  may help further deter Azerbaijan from conducting a large-scale  attack. In March, an EU monitoring mission consisting of 100 unarmed  monitors arrived in Armenia. Like the Russian armed peacekeeping  contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh, their mandate is scheduled to last  until 2025. But unlike the armed Russian peacekeepers, the EU  monitors will only be able to work on the Armenian side of the  border, meaning their mandate could be extended by Yerevan. 

In recent weeks, Armenia has made progress in normalizing ties with  neighboring Turkey, which is Azerbaijan's closest ally. For Armenia  and Turkey, such efforts to restore their bilateral ties offer  leverage they can use to constrain Azerbaijan from making excessive  demands in peace talks, as Baku would prefer that any steps toward  Turkey- Armenia normalization be preconditioned on securing a deal  ending its conflict with Armenia. 

Iran, meanwhile, will continue actions aimed at deterring Azerbaijan,  maintaining already high tensions between the two countries.  Azerbaijan's repeated violations of the 2020 cease-fire - combined  with the Russian army's setbacks in Ukraine - have eroded both the  authority of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the  credibility of Russia's commitment to protecting Armenia from  Azerbaijani encroachment. This has concerned nearby Iran by raising  the specter of a large-scale Azerbaijan invasion of southern Armenia  that could block trade routes connecting Iran to the Black Sea. Such  an invasion could also put the entire border under the control of  Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey that has recently been cozying up to  Israel as well - two of Tehran's top regional rivals. Within this  context, Iran has been stepping up efforts to threaten Azerbaijan in  the hopes of deterring it from attacking southern Armenia. In recent  months, the Iranian government has ramped up diplomatic engagement  with Armenia, as demonstrated by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali  Bagheri Kani's March 22 visit to the country. The Iranian military  has also made threatening maneuvers near the Azerbaijani border and  has peddled propaganda showing the possibility of attacks on  Azerbaijani cities. Amid Russia's failure to halt Baku's continued  encroachment and latest provocations, Tehran will continue to take  these relatively low-cost actions, which are aimed at forcing  Azerbaijan to plan as though the possibility of Iran joining the war  cannot be excluded, thereby making military solutions in the region  much more complicated for Baku. But unless Azerbaijan actually tries  to seize territory in southern Armenia, Iran is highly unlikely to  directly intervene in the conflict, given the domestic political  implications this would have for the regime and the possibility of  war with NATO-member Turkey as a result. 

In recent weeks, social media accounts affiliated with Iran's Islamic  Revolutionary Guard Corps began sharing videos of Shahed-136 kamikaze  drones crossing the border with Azerbaijan over the Aras River. The  videos were widely seen as a threat to forcefully respond to any  Azerbaijani attempt to unify the Turkic world by seizing southern  Armenia and establishing a land connection with its Naxcivan exclave. 

An Azerbaijani lawmaker known for being an outspoken critic of Iran  was injured by gunfire outside his home in an apparent assassination  attempt on March 29, the same day that Azerbaijan opened its embassy  in Israel. The State Security Service of Azerbaijan called the  incident a terrorist attack but Baku has been reluctant to officially  implicate the Iranian government. This was the latest of numerous  incidents in recent months that suggest escalating tensions between  Iran and Azerbaijan, including a Jan. 27 shooting at the Azerbaijani  embassy in Tehran."