According to
this report by Zack Jewell, president Donald Trump prevented a war that Azerbaijan was likely planning against Armenia:
In March, Trump administration officials were briefed on U.S. intelligence that Azerbaijan was planning a major offensive against Armenia, reigniting hostilities two years after Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing campaign uprooted thousands of Armenians from their ancestral homeland in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kopalyan said. The American intelligence assessment sparked immediate action from the Trump administration. Later that month, the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, opened up negotiations with Azerbaijan as the White House sought to prevent another armed conflict.
“Once U.S. intelligence had that information, the Trump administration decided that they had to step in and put diplomatic pressure on Azerbaijan not to attack, and then initiate diplomacy to find a solution,” said Kopalyan, who previously wrote about the significance of Trump’s Armenia-Azerbaijan deal. “So if it were not for the Trump administration, Azerbaijan would have attacked, and we would have had severe instability in the region.” [...]
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in and out of severe conflict for the past 35 years, with Azerbaijan most recently taking full control of Nagorno-Karabakh — a large patch of land inside of Azerbaijan that was inhabited by Armenians for centuries. In 2020, conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh resulted in thousands of casualties before a ceasefire was agreed upon. Nearly three years later, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing Armenians to flee the region.
For the past five years, Azerbaijan has threatened to encroach on Armenia’s sovereignty, pushing for its own trade route — called the Zangezur Corridor — that would cut through Armenia and connect Azerbaijan to its landlocked exclave, Nakhchivan. With Azerbaijan potentially setting its sights on southern Armenia and risking the breakout of another war, the Trump administration had to move fast. [...]
Under the TRIPP proposal, Armenia and the United States would build a major trade route through Syunik that Azerbaijan could use freely to gain better access to Nakhchivan.
“The United States’ presence would alleviate Armenia’s concerns. It would also mitigate Azerbaijan’s concerns, and Azerbaijan would no longer have the Zangezur Corridor premise to attack,” Kopalyan said.
Not all Armenians were pleased with the deal, with some in the diaspora arguing that Trump’s negotiations favored Azerbaijan. The biggest criticism of the deal is that it does not address Azerbaijan’s past human rights abuses against Armenians, such as the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and allegations that Azerbaijan’s government is holding at least 23 Armenians — likely more — hostage in Baku.
While this is a valid and vital point, there is a downside here that's problematic:
The Armenian National Committee of America — which is affiliated with the pro-Russia political wing in Armenia called the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — blasted the Trump-negotiated deal. The group said that the deal was “rewarding [Azerbaijan’s] aggression, compromising Armenia’s sovereignty, and consolidating Azerbaijan’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of over 150,000 indigenous Armenian Christians.”
Good grief. Do they realize any support for Russia practically risks even retroactively validating Josef Stalin, the tyrant who practically led to damage against Armenia over a century ago when he enabled Muslim countries like Azerbaijan to take over regions vital to Armenia? If the ANCOA really does support Russia as it is under Vladimir Putin, that's bad, and as a result, a better representative may be needed to make the arguments they do, because communism is no better than Islamofascism.
In a phone call with The Daily Wire, Garen Jinbachian, the community coordinator for the Western Region of the Armenian National Committee of America, said that Trump’s Armenia-Azerbaijan deal “seems like a huge PR stunt to some extent.”
“Frankly, you cannot have lasting peace, you cannot have real peace if one of the parties is held at gunpoint and practically coerced to sign it,” said Jinbachian. “The whole deal is based on injustice, the lack of justice in the region. Ethnic cleansing is not justice.”
While Trump's staff may have recognized that it was wrong for Azerbaijan to attack Armenia if they were plotting so, it's also wrong to act as though Azerbaijan's leadership is legitimate, based on what they were doing, and already did when they committed ethnic cleansing in Arsakh. The human rights abuses are also another grave felony. So it remains to be seen if Trump's going to do anything to mend that damage, and have any and all hostages held in Azerbaijan released too. The creep running Azerbaijan cannot be considered a legitimate politician based on what he enabled in the past number of years, period, and that's something that must be brought up in the next few years too. Simultaneously, ANCOA must distance themselves from any potential support for Russia as it stands under Putin.
Update: and seriously, should Trump have
met with Putin in Alaska? Even if they're not meeting at the White House, it's very troubling that Trump would meet with somebody like Putin any more than Syria's current despot, al-Sharaa.
Labels: Armenia, Asia, Christianity, communism, dhimmitude, islam, jihad, military, misogyny, political corruption, racism, Russia, sexual violence, terrorism, United States, war on terror, White House
