Armenian NGOs: Iran needs Armenia to be unable to defend itself

“After a 44-day war since 2020, Iran is seeking to strengthen its position in our region. In particular, Iran opposes the so-called Zangezur corridor in order to maintain its influence on Azerbaijan, since currently the connection between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan is provided through Iranian territory.”

The Armenian public organization “Union of Informed Citizens” shared videos on its Facebook page where it claims that Iran is against arming Armenia, Caliber.Az reports.

“In addition, Iran is not interested in unblocking communications in order to maintain its monopoly role as a transit country for both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Besides, Iran wants to strengthen its position and have a military presence in Armenia, and Iran needs Armenia to be unable to defend itself. Perhaps it is for this reason that Iran does not encourage the supply of weapons to Armenia and regularly creates obstacles in the way of weapons imported into Armenia from India.

Iran also reacts very sharply to the emergence of other powers in the region. An example of this is the negative reaction of the Iranian Foreign Ministry in the summer of 2023, when joint Armenian-American military exercises took place in Armenia. Thus, Iran wants to create a security environment in which Armenia will not be able to resist Azerbaijan and Turkey and will be forced to become increasingly dependent on Iran, even to the point of stationing Iranian troops in Syunik [Zangezur]. And for this, Iran needs Armenia to be unable to defend itself.

In addition, in Armenia, there is now a lot of talk about deepening military-political relations with Iran and are even discussing the issue of inviting Iranian troops to Syunik. However, let's try to figure out who are Iran's military-political partners and proxies and what state they are in.

Iran's military-political partners are Syria, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Let's start with Syria. Iran's ally Syria has been in a state of civil war for 13 years. Various factions within the country fought against each other, as a result of which 500 thousand people had already died, and another 6 million were deprived of shelter and became refugees, and the Syrian economy decreased by 20 times from its pre-war level. If before the war life in Syria was approximately at the level of Poland, now Syrians are poorer than the population of a large part of Africa.

The civil war began after Iran's ally Bashar al-Assad fired tanks and helicopter gunships at peaceful protesters who were protesting against him, killing hundreds of civilians.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon is considered terrorist by most Western countries. The movement has used suicide bombers to blow up diplomatic buildings, wages war against Israel, and continues to deny Lebanon any escape from war and conflict.

The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen started a civil war in 2014 that has raged for 10 years, killing an estimated 400,000 people, 85,000 of them children, and sending Yemen's economy into severe decline. As a result of the war, the Houthis who came to power decided to declare de facto war on the world fleet and Western countries, as a result of which Yemen became a de facto terrorist state and regularly subject to missile attacks,” the videos say.