The Conversation: Tensions are rising between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Aliyev’s rhetoric aims to legitimize some military action
Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has launched a fierce verbal attack on Armenia, which he has called a fascist state. “Fascism must be destroyed,” he said in an interview on local TV networks on Jan. 7. “Either the Armenian leadership will destroy it, or we will.”
This rhetoric is strongly reminiscent of baseless claims used by Vladimir Putin about Ukraine to justify Russia’s invasion, The Conversation writes.
There are also reports that Azerbaijan’s acquisition of advanced Israeli weapons have increased recently, according to Israeli journalist Avi Sharf, national security, cyber and open source intelligence editor at Israeli news outlet Haaretz.
After a 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan took control over most of Nagorno-Karabakh. The rest was conquered in September 2023, prompting Armenians living there (more than 100,000 people) to flee to Armenia. Since the defeat in the second Karabakh war in 2020, Armenia has taken steps to strengthen its defences. Among other things, it has made significant arms purchases from France. This has also provoked Aliyev to criticise France and its president, Emmanuel Macron. But, although Armenia has been trying to reduce Azerbaijan’s military advantage through reforms in the army and arms purchases, the country is still militarily inferior to its neighbour.
Any military confrontation is likely to result in an early defeat for Armenia. As noted, the argument from Azerbaijan is clearly that if there is conflict in the region, it will be part of an Armenian “preparation for a war”. Baku suggests that therefore the responsibility for any conflict would lie with Armenia and those who arm the country (in particular, France). It’s possible that this rhetoric is intended to legitimize some kind of military action.
Because of escalating tension in the past few years, Armenia invited the European Union to monitor the border between the countries. This was to help address Azerbaijani accusations that Armenia was preparing for war, and to monitor, and prevent, shootings along the border, The Conversation writes. It adds that Azerbaijan has denied the EU permission to operate on its territory, so they were only able to work from the Armenian side. It has also strongly condemned the EU for this mission. “So, why might Azerbaijan want to reignite tensions with Armenia? One point of contention between them is access to the ‘Zangezur corridor’, a land connection between Azerbaijan and its autonomous republic, Nakhichevan,” the news outlet writes, noting that Azerbaijan has long demanded access to, and control of, this route. The natural corridor runs through Armenia’s Syunik region. Armenia has declared its willingness to open up transport connections throughout the region–including between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan – but opposes a corridor through its territory that it does not control.
As noted, the South Caucasus (the region including Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) has long been an area that Putin sees as part of his sphere of influence. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia tried to keep the region relatively calm, but in 2020 Putin allowed the war to continue until Armenia was defeated, before putting pressure on Aliyev to stop. Three years later, Azerbaijan took what was left of Nagorno-Karabakh while Russian peacekeepers looked on. Armenian concern over what it sees as Russian bias towards Azerbaijan has led Yerevan to increasingly turn towards the west. On January 14 2025, a “strategic partnership charter” was signed between Armenia and the US, which includes an economic and defense partnership, but whether the new Trump administration will want to build on, or even ignore, that relationship is not yet clear. In what is considered an important symbolic move Armenia is also currently negotiating with Russia over the removal of its Federal Security Service (FSB security service) guards along the Armenian border in an attempt to reduce reliance on Moscow for its security. The EU has meanwhile strengthened relations with Armenia. “While Azerbaijan may have escaped international fallout over the attack on Nagorno-Karabakh in the autumn of 2020, and over the ethnic cleansing of the enclave’s Armenian population in 2023. But if a new war led to a large-scale attack on Armenia it would unlikely to be ignored by the west. Despite the west’s minimal reactions to Azerbaijani incursions across the Armenian border in May 2021 and September 2022, in 2025 there is more international focus on the region and on the potential consequences of ignoring what’s going on around Russia’s borders. Although military intervention from the west is unlikely, the possibility of sanctions against Azerbaijan could be enough of an incentive for Aliyev to try to maintain the peace,” the news outlet writes.
