US, France prepare Armenia for war Yerevan repeats past mistakes  

It’s not surprising that the Armenian leadership, which outwardly seeks to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, is rejecting the legitimate demands put forth by Baku.

One of these demands is to remove any references to territorial claims against Azerbaijan from the Armenian Constitution. Baku’s second demand is for Yerevan to approach the OSCE with the intention of dissolving the OSCE Minsk Group.

We see that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his team are willing to discuss anything except for when they will address the real barriers to signing a peace agreement with Azerbaijan. Why?  

The answer is straightforward. The Armenian leadership is entirely dependent on directives from Washington and Paris. The US and France are systematically taking steps to revive the "Karabakh issue" and exacerbate the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

The hearings in the US Congress focused on the "fall of Nagorno-Karabakh", the invitation extended to representatives of the now-defunct separatist regime, and numerous initiatives from leading US and French institutions in support of the "Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh" are all interconnected. The legislative initiative put forth by pro-Armenian Congressman Adam Schiff and several of his colleagues regarding the adoption of the "Artsakh Revenue Recovery Act" on September 18 deserves particular attention.      

Just think about what Schiff and his supporters are demanding. They are calling for all US financial institutions that hold Azerbaijan's sovereign assets to report these holdings to the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of the Treasury. Within 60 days of the  enactment of the law, the president must block transactions involving these assets, and within 90 days of the blockage, they must be seized. Moreover, Schiff and his colleagues are demanding the establishment of the "Artsakh Revenue Recovery Fund", which would receive the confiscated Azerbaijani assets.

These funds would then be used to provide compensation to Armenians displaced from Artsakh, based on criteria related to lost income from their property, businesses, and employment due to Azerbaijan's military aggression.

Essentially, this is an overt proposal to initiate the plundering of Azerbaijani assets. There are calls in the US for grotesquely unjust measures against a nation that has fully restored its sovereignty and territorial integrity! Nothing has been imposed on Armenia, which occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory for nearly thirty years and committed a series of heinous crimes, from ethnic cleansing to the genocide in Khojaly. The US has not taken any measures against Armenia. 

On the contrary, it is important to remember that the US enacted the discriminatory Section 907 against Azerbaijan when Armenia occupied Shusha and Lachin and committed genocide in Khojaly. These actions were taken in the US to appease the Armenian lobby. As we can see, nothing has changed since then, which is why the value of Azerbaijan’s victories and the complete restoration of Azerbaijan's sovereignty and territorial integrity has significantly increased.

Indeed, the US does not propose creating the Fund to assist Azerbaijan in restoring territories liberated from Armenian occupation. There are no calls to allocate funds for building houses for over one million Azerbaijanis who were deprived of the chance to live on their own land for nearly thirty years. Nor does the US suggest establishing the Fund to help Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia return to their ancestral lands. The US offers to reward those who have illegally occupied internationally recognised Azerbaijani territory for nearly three decades, refusing to acknowledge Azerbaijan’s laws while holding Armenian passports.

It’s no surprise that Schiff’s disgraceful list is filled with long-time figures beholden to US-Armenian interests. Notably, Frank Pallone, Jim Costa, Anna Eshoo, and others are all catering to Armenian demands, especially with upcoming presidential and Senate elections in the US. As part of this overtly anti-Azerbaijani campaign, there was a commissioned so-called "investigation" by OCCRP, alongside the usual nonsense from Freedom House and Samantha Power's statement—who is an ally of Ruben Vardanyan—regarding a "USAID investigation into the mass exodus of Armenians from Karabakh." Moreover, the US is increasing its financial and military support for Armenia, a topic we have covered extensively. It is also important to note that behind the anti-Azerbaijani campaign in the US and around the world is the PR agency Edelman, which has been working on behalf of oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who is currently under investigation.  

In tandem with the Americans, the French are also actively involved. One only needs to recall the disgraceful actions of Nathalie Loiseau, who pushed for the recognition of a day commemorating the "ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh" in the European Parliament. We remember that Michel Barnier, recently appointed France's prime minister, made an illegal visit to the temporarily occupied territories of Azerbaijan in 2021.   We also remember that French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to disrupt the victorious march of the Azerbaijani army during the 44-day second Karabakh war, expressing outrage following the liberation of Shusha city. The pinnacle of the Armenian-French hysteria was their unsuccessful attempts to condemn Azerbaijan in the UN Security Council after Azerbaijan conducted an anti-terrorist operation in the Karabakh region.  

All this has not yielded the results expected in Yerevan and Paris. Now we see active preparation for a new war, with the political, military, and financial backers being the US and France. This is the answer to why the Armenian leadership refuses to remove the real obstacles to signing a peace treaty with Azerbaijan: they have simply been instructed not to do so by their masters in the US and France! As a result, we also observe that the Armenian leadership has hardened its stance in negotiations. The Armenian officials are referring to "Nagorno-Karabakh," and the Armenian Foreign Ministry is making claims of "ethnic cleansing". This is not merely an act of immorality; it is also a grave mistake of the Armenian leadership.

Unfortunately, they have not learned from the events of last year when the Armenian government continued making provocations by financing and arming the Karabakh junta, despite warnings from Baku about the dire consequences of such actions.

The outcome is well-known. We see that Pashinyan and his team have failed to reflect on the reasons and have not managed to break free from their status as puppets of the US and France. They undoubtedly have their own plans for the South Caucasus region and cynically use Armenia as a tool to execute those plans, which are destined to fail. Meanwhile, Armenia's losses from playing by the US and French rules could be truly catastrophic.

Translated by Naila Huseynova