Main lessons from President Aliyev’s recent Shusha speech Iranian subtext, Russian “peacekeepers” and more
In his speech dedicated to the second anniversary of the liberation of Shusha, President Ilham Aliyev, building upon the occasion’s central theme, reflected on Azerbaijan’s commanding presence on the state border with Armenia and the temporality of Russian "peacekeepers", and also delivered a nuanced, yet undeniably devastatingly damning rebuke of Iran’s increasingly hostile attitude towards Baku, referring to the elephant in the room solely by inference.
As has been the case regarding many numerous speeches made by the Azerbaijani leader in the past, this address was also a compendium of the nation’s immediate and long-term agenda. Shusha’s glorious liberation two years ago, and its gigantic historic significance, were appositely central to all that was articulated by President Aliyev. But there were also corollary lines of undeniable criticality. In his characteristically punchy and glaringly lucid manner, albeit roped with a disdain for target-oriented unseemly loquaciousness, he fired a magazine of key messages aimed at external actors.
Shusha’s conceptual significance reemphasised
As the massive reconstruction undertaken in the liberated territories is pursued with an increasingly heightened degree of immediate urgency, the conceptual meaning of Shusha’s liberation continues to evolve beyond its keenly-felt historic proportions. President Aliyev himself, in his famous “Shusha, you are free!” speech, made on the day that the impregnable fortress was officially declared as liberated, set a train of thoughts in motion, expressing in a few succinct lines what would define post-war Azerbaijan’s key creed, that is, by virtue of recovering its rightful possessions, the nation has gained a new sense of purpose.
The centrality of Shusha’s liberation to Azerbaijan’s sense of worth and future aspirations is in the process of acquiring new contours, some of which were imbued with an amply rarefied form in President Aliyev’s recent address. It is not just that this momentous day irreversibly ruled the fate of the Second Karabakh War in Azerbaijan’s favour, but it also rendered a gigantic reversal of the ignominious injustice the nation suffered in 1992, when the city fell into alien hands.
This was also a feat of achieving the seemingly impossible, for it behoves one to recall that this impregnable fortress was not liberated via resorting to devastating artillery, but through strategy, due to “climbing steep rocks”, making a long and arduous journey through a path commensurate with Victory Road, presently linking Fuzuli with Shusha, the modus operandi being light weapons utilised in bloody hand-to-hand battles. By refusing to assume control of the city at the expense of exposing it to even partial destruction, Azerbaijan irrefutably reiterated the sheer meaning of Shusha’s place in its eternal consciousness.
For President Aliyev, from the very outset of the day when he, on a blustery November morning, attired in military fatigues, communicated the glorious news to the nation, the battle of Shusha was inextricably interwoven into the annals of legend. This was, amongst other moments, conditioned by the fact that those who liberated these lands were members of a brave and undeniably patriotic generation who had never seen the territory for which they risked their lifeblood and whose formative years were spent under the aegis of President Ilham Aliyev.
Post-escalation military balance
The authorities in Yerevan were panicking during the Second Karabakh War, claimed the Azerbaijani leader in his address. From what can be observed, the grip and smell of fear have not reduced. Contemporary Armenia is not devoid of insecurities: a sense of impending doom and the reluctance to divest itself of impracticable purpose seem to cumulatively define its present incoherent exhortations.
The consequences of the recent 13-14 September escalation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border are key to the current hysteria. President Aliyev confirmed that, due to the successful operation, Baku has now assumed strategic heights overseeing the cities of Garakilsa, Gafan, Gorus and Istisu, nearing the shores of Lake Small Goycha, with Lake Big Goycha also being within sight.
This factual state of affairs on the ground should be understood from the prism of three essential concomitants carefully specified by the President. Firstly, Armenia’s military position on the de facto state border will continue to be weakened if Yerevan’s provocations do not cease. In other words, Azerbaijan has pledged not to reconsider the proportionality of its retaliatory measures, as they are perfectly adequate, right and just. Secondly, Baku’s steps serve the purpose of self-defence. If any sign of concentration of forces is observed from the commanding heights assumed by Azerbaijan, it will act swiftly to ensure its security. Thirdly, Baku’s assertiveness is justified by Armenia’s continuous disinclination to fulfil all the provisions of the 10 November 2020 trilateral statement.
Iranian subtext
President Aliyev is a man known for an aptitude for choosing an incriminatory lexicon in such a way that substance always prevails over visible verbal proportions. Such were his two lucid points on Tehran’s conduct vis-à-vis Baku. Whilst elucidating on Azerbaijan’s efforts to isolate Armenia globally, and particularly in the Muslim world, by forging a comprehensive international legal framework to substantiate the falsity of Yerevan’s overall argument before the war of 2020, Aliyev made a not-so-oblique reference to one force that has stood as a hindrance: “We have isolated Armenia from the key pillars of the Muslim world. It is true that we could not isolate them completely”.
The Azerbaijani leader’s reference to the Ayatollah’s elephant in the room is abundantly clear, with the rhetorical questions preceding the aforementioned line, leaving no room for double-entendre: “A country destroying mosques cannot be friends with Muslim countries. Can leaders of Muslim countries open their arms to embrace those destroying mosques? Can they hug and kiss them? This is nothing but hypocrisy”.
The crux of the matter is that Tehran’s perfidiousness, which has reached a new zenith of shambolic pretentiousness over the past month or so, has its deep roots firmly embedded in the years preceding the Second Karabakh War. It was long before 2020 that Tehran and Yerevan developed a strong strategic affinity aimed, amongst other objectives, at weakening Azerbaijan’s clout.
For Iran, Armenia has long been a useful counterbalance to Baku’s assertiveness which, for the theocratic regime, has traditionally been deemed as fraught, with undesirable consequences. Tehran’s insincerity was also visible during the reconstruction of the Blue Mosque in Yerevan, for every attempt was made to project this as a testament to the Persian cultural legacy, eviscerating its true Azerbaijani-Turkic essence. This served both sides well. For Armenia, this was a useful mode of airbrushing the “inconvenient” remnants of history, whereas the Iranians instrumentalised this as a means of reasserting the reach of their soft power footprint.
The truth is that Tehran was neither prepared for, nor desirous of, Baku’s victory over Armenia in 2020. In fact, as we now come to realise on the basis of the deep-rooted anxieties that are omnipresent in the words and actions of Iranian officials, such a turn of events constituted a nightmare scenario for the theocratic regime. As esteemed Irish academic Dr Patrick Walsh told me the other day, "Iran has a seething annoyance at Azerbaijan's victory, and it will need to readjust to the new reality". In some ways, by finding itself in a difficult position for recalibration after the Second Karabakh War, Iran has failed to mask its true nature.
During the years of illegal occupation, Tehran utilised Baku’s predicament of being unable to control its southern borders as a godsend opportunity for feathering its nest via illegal trade with Armenia. In some ways, Iran’s continuous cantankerous opposition to the Zangazur Corridor Project forms a continuum of the same design.
President Aliyev also commented on the recent provocative Iranian military exercises conducted on the border with Azerbaijan. He, in a manner befitting his sense of apportion, did not reflect upon Tehran’s jingoistic sabre-rattling, bordering on infantile expostulations, at any length. It must have been beneath his dignity to issue a verbally proportionate response to Iranian war games. His comments were akin to a “beside-the-point” quip, aimed as a coda to the main argument: “Our Army has shown heroism, professionalism, and dedication. If necessary, we will show it again; we will achieve what we want. Everyone knows this, and those who conduct military exercises in support of Armenia on our border should also know this. Nobody can scare us”.
Over the past year or so, Azerbaijan’s attitude towards Tehran has changed on a tit-for-tat basis. In this vein, the Iranian subtext of the Shusha address should be viewed in conjunction with the President’s two statements, made on 21 October and 11 November. In the first, Aliyev made it abundantly clear that the security, rights and well-being of those Azerbaijanis “cut out from the state” were of utmost importance to Baku. In the second, he raised the issue of 40 million Azerbaijanis living outside their country being unable to study in their mother tongue.
In the same vein, President Aliyev also reflected on the so-called Russian "peacekeepers", reiterating their temporality with one reference to the 10 November 2020 trilateral statement, succinctly covering the entire issue regarding Baku’s firm opinion on the subject. This was also not promoted as a central theme, for Aliyev touched upon the issue whilst explaining that the Armenian side should make no mistake of injudiciously relying on any external succour. Again, the essential element was delivered without ascribing any measure of inflated significance, yet without militating against its strategic importance.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has already issued his distorted and ill-conceived interpretation of President Aliyev’s recent Shusha speech. The Armenian leader’s muddled thoughts are not worthy of recapitulation. What is probably far more important is that he, at this juncture, should have thought of an ill-fated jamboree organised in Shusha in May 2019, in which he laid prostrate in a state of visible intoxication in front of cameras, and reflected on how destiny ruled remorselessly against him, rendering the boisterous confidence of his early mayfly days in the office as null and void. He should now be manifestly aware that Armenia, if persistent in its obstreperousness, could find itself one cardiac arrest away from what would see its fortunes plummet beyond repair. If analogised as a blocked aorta, Armenia needs a stent of the highest order, and this is peace on Azerbaijani terms.