Political scientist: Use of the territory of Azerbaijan to conduct protests in Iran has caused considerable cooling of relations between countries

ArmInfo. Protests in Iran are due to social problems that arose in the country, which led to an increase in inflation, sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate. However, initially these rallies had no political connotations and were not of a mass nature. Vardan Voskanyan, head of the Department of Oriental Studies at the Yerevan State University, told a press conference in Yerevan on January 23. The political scientist noted that the political implication in the actions appeared only after they were encouraged by external forces, including Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States. As noted by Voskanyan, traces of external interference, first of all, are contained on the pages of social networks, in particular, the very widespread in Iran Telegram. The political scientist also noted that the Iranians are well aware that the territory of Azerbaijan was used to organize riots in the country. The expert noted that the IRI press, in particular, representing the position of the guards of the Islamic Revolution, says that Azerbaijan's plans to create a cargo terminal in the Iranian border town of Astara are nothing more than a hidden program for creating a base intended for Israeli intelligence services. These actions of Azerbaijan in turn led to the cooling of relations between the republics, in particular, the result of this cooling was the freezing of the construction of the bridge, Astara (Azerbaijan) - Astara (Iran). There is no railway from this bridge to Rest. The political scientist noted that all the unrest in Iran, ultimately, led to the fact that in the relations between Azerbaijan and Iran there was considerable cooling, however, these protest actions did not affect the relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Armenia. As Voskanyan stated, the ultimate goal of all these provocations was the hope that Iran would apply brute force against the protesters, which would lead to clashes, bloodshed and numerous victims on both sides. This would allow the international community to exert pressure on Tehran and return Iran to a previous or even tougher sanctions regime. However, the IRI authorities did not succumb to this provocation, and we can summarize that these provocations did not fulfill their task, the political scientist believes. It should be noted that on December 28 protest actions took place in several cities of Iran. The Iranian government has resolutely stated that they are caused not only by internal political problems, but also by interference in this process of the an-nest forces. During the action, 20 people were killed, including one police officer.