In late July, arose between Turkey and Israel acute diplomatic conflict and the visit of the Minister of regional cooperation of Israel, tzachi Hanegbi in Armenia are forced to pay closer attention to the emerging geopolitical realities in the South of Armenia, in the Eastern region of the Middle East.
Their main peculiarity lies in the fact that if we were dealing with a stable and trusting the Armenian-Iranian relations, developing parallel to the ever-deepening Israeli-Azerbaijani military cooperation, now the friend of our enemy has also reached out, offering to cooperate on regional issues.
However, an old friend of Armenia, Iran, recently has become all the more intense to Express their desire to deepen cooperation with Armenia, to give these relations a true strategic content.
Both of these trends are uniformly positive for Armenia. The first of them is due to the growing dissatisfaction with Israel, Turkey, and the second, of Iran — Azerbaijan.
The motive for the dissatisfaction of Israel began development of the preceding and the following scandalous statement of the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on 25th July, which filled the patience of the Israelis. The fact that after the murder of two Israeli policemen near the al-Aqsa mosque Israeli police with the 14th of July, imposed tight security measures around a third in its largest shrines in the Islamic world.
Using this situation, two days after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged all Muslims of the world to come to Jerusalem to protect al-Aqsa. He also demanded to form a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, i.e., including East Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal capital.
It was such a blow for Israel, the strategic ally of Azerbaijan had to immediately get down to business and, of course, the first thing to step on “sore spots” of Turkey, which is what happened during the visit of the Minister of regional cooperation of Israel, tzachi Hanegbi to Yerevan and visit to the memorial of Armenian genocide victims Tsitsernakaberd.
The question arises — if Erdogan once again I do not think he would himself Sultan and wouldn’t “rant”, I would have thought the Israeli leadership about the need to be friends with the Armenians, and he would have her desire to from selling weapons?
Let’s not forget that last year in the days of the April war, the only significant advantage of Azerbaijan were the drones of Israeli production, which has taken many lives of Armenian soldiers. And when the Israeli police had already restricted their strict security measures around al-Aqsa, giving the Muslims free to use this relic, remains in force Armenia extended the hand of friendship, or Israel will soon forget about it?
Now let’s discuss the second trend, that is, the desire of Tehran as much as possible to deepen the Armenian-Iranian economic cooperation, which was aimed at recent decisions of the Parliament of Iran. This is based on not only the discontent of the Iran policy of Azerbaijan, but also the desire to make Armenia a springboard to deepen cooperation with European countries and the EAEC.
Part of Azerbaijan is discontent lately it was openly demonstrated in the form of statements of the Chairman of the Majlis of Iran Larijani and the press Secretary of the foreign Ministry. Iran concerned about the prospect of intervention in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict third parties and, primarily, Israel.
Israel have turned Azerbaijan into a control point intelligence operations against Iran, and Tehran is well aware of. Therefore, the obvious dissatisfaction of Israel, Turkey, plus the trends of deepening discontent of the Iranian Azerbaijan, has formed a equation with two unknowns.
The first is how to cooperate with Israel, not to complain our a thousandfold more reliable partner for Iran?
Second — how to deepen cooperation with Iran, bringing it to a strategic level in order not to cause discontent of Israel and especially Russia?
It’s like the famous puzzle with the wolf, the sheep and hay, which in turn must smuggle across the river: first you need to smuggle sheep, leaving the wolf with grass, then return and take the wolf, taking back the sheep that she was left on the shore alone with the wolf, and then instead to transport the hay. It is clear that in the end have to go back to transport the rest of the sheep.
To improve relations with Israel need to have a specific agenda, which will not be any problems that would affect the strategic aspects of relations between Armenia and Iran. It is for Armenia’s national security issues, which require even greater autonomy, including in relations with a strategic ally — Russia. Because the increase in the level of security of independent Armenia, with all its components, complies with regional priorities is Iran. Therefore, it is understandable why went for a short break, the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan will interrupt his vacation to attend the inauguration ceremony of the President of Iran, which will be held on fifth of August in Tehran.
