Fallout from an Iranian Crisis

All this exchange of rhetoric has been flying over the heads of neighboring nations, which will suffer most should a conflagration be triggered. Armenia, being on the front line, will become the first one to be affected.

The US has befriended medieval potentates in the Gulf Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, using the euphemistic description of “moderate regimes” to cover up the political compromise of its own democratic principles. Therefore, Armenia is entitled to choose its own friends (especially when its lifeline hinges on that choice) regardless if those friends are viewed as less democratic in the Western lexicon of double-standards.

Iran has been a friend of Armenia for centuries. Armenians have enjoyed prosperity during the rule of the Shah and they have been treated with dignity even under the Islamic Republic. As Georgia is conniving with Azerbaijan against it, Armenia has a more reliable route with the outside world through Iran.

Plus, through political necessity, the two countries have been drawn closer together.

Iran is a huge country with abundant energy resources which it has also been trading with Armenia. Iran is the 18th largest country in the world, with a land mass of 636,372 square miles that can cover the UK, France, Germany and Spain, combined. Its population is 75 million, with Persians accounting for 61 percent of the population, Azeris 16 percent and Kurds 10 percent.

Unlike the Ottomans, Ittihadists and Kemalists who exterminated Armenians to take over their historic homeland, the Persian rulers have valued Armenians as creative and enterprising people and they have encouraged them to be integrated into their societies. An example of that “tough love” was expressed by Shah Abbas, in the early 17th century, who forced Armenians from Julfa (Jugha) in Nakhichevan, Armenia, to migrate to Persia and form New Julfa, in Isfahan, to contribute to the economic development of his country.

The war rhetoric around Iran has another dimension, which no longer is kept as a secret but is discussed publicly: the plan is to implode Iran along ethnic fault lines and to snatch the northern region (Iranian Azerbaijan) and attach it to the Republic of Azerbaijan, the dynastic property of the Aliyev clan, ruled by another “moderate” despot, to please the West. If this indeed happens, it will create a huge docile country in the region, at the expense of Armenia, which would face a more formidable, larger enemy, supported and armed by Turkey and Israel.

The fallout from any military attack on Iran or any territorial partition will translate into a catastrophic blow to a beleaguered Armenia.