The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Armenia - Azerbaijan War: Turkey and Iran at Risk || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

After Azerbaijan's lightning assault on Nagorno-Karabakh caused ethnic Armenians to flee the region, there's potential that Azerbaijan will continue to invade Armenia proper. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/armenia-azerbaijan-war-turkey-and-iran-at-risk

Hey everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you an exciting hotel room. The news on what I'd talk today is about something that has to do with caucuses again. For those of you who remember a few weeks ago, the Azerbaijani launched a fair bit of a lightning assault on a place called Nagorno-Karabah, which is an area that was populated with ethnic Armenians, and the war was over in less than three days. And pretty much all of the Armenians who were living there have since absconded and left for Armenia proper. Where there's now going to be, it looks like a second face of that conflict where the

Asberjani's are likely to invade our media proper. What's going on here is that the Asbijani are looking for a land corridor to connect two parts of the country. In order to explain the significance of that, we're going to have to do a little bit of screen share here to Google Zoom, which is Earth, which is one of my favorite programs ever. Anyway, here we are looking at where the former Soviet space in the North meets with the Middle east and the south. And the Caucasus is this mountainous land bridge in between we. And let's just go ahead, zoom it a little bit. Move more. Okay. So the northern Caucasus or the greater Caucasus is this line here.

Very rugged, very steep, pointing to a lot of ethnic minorities like you would expect in any number of mountainous zones. This is an area where the Russians have always had a problem. The Chechens, if you remember them, like right here. And then you've got these two little enclose. slaves in the north of Kasia here and South Ossetia here, where the Russians have sent in troops and basically occupy them and make them de facto Russian territory. And some people would say that the Russians are basically trying to do this in Ukraine as well, but I think it's important to understand that for the Russians it's all about controlling the access points.

That's Ukraine where that's the wars that they've launched here in Kazi and South Setsia. The Russians know that their population is dying out. So they believe that they can forward position troops in the access points that they will have an easier time defending themselves. So there is a closed road here in Akazia. There's a pass that links the North Ascession province, which is part of the Russian Federation, with the South Ascession province, which is part of Georgia. And they're trying to plug those access points. So you're going to see a lot of this, whether it's in Central Asia or the western periphery that is near Europe. And that actually is kind of relative to the discussion about what's going on in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Now here we've got the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. The capital here is Baku. It's got about half the population in the entire place. The former Soviet Republic of Yerevan, independent Armenia is right here. Get the Turks over here and the Iranians to the south. Now, let's zoom it a little bit more. Okay. Yerevan, capital of Armenia.

Mount Ehrerat is a zone that supposedly Noah's arc crashed into as the floods receded. It is the national symbol of Yerevan, of the Armenians, and it is not in their territory. It's in Turkey, but they can see it. It dominates the skyline from the capital. Nagorik Harabaz, this mountainous zone over here. This is the area that the Razabijani has recently liberal. liberated from Armenian control. And Nikyvan, which is right here, is that chunk of Azerbaijani territory that the

Azerbaijani would like to physically connect to the country. And if all of this seems like just cartographic spaghetti, it is. And you can thank Joe Stalin for that. Because at the time that the Soviet Union was gaining control of this area in the 20s, he went through and modified all the borders to make sure that if any of these areas ever got independence again, that it would immediately be at one another's throes. And he wielded his pen with extreme levels of skill. So let's get a little bit closer. The dominant issue in this area actually isn't the Russians. The Russians had a defense agreement with the Armenians until very

recently. I guess technically it's still in force, but the Russians have moved most of their troops out and moved them to Ukraine because they need every pair of hands and every gun they can get. And that's kind of held this area of frozen. But one, Once you get into the lesser Caucasus, remember greater Caucasus, which are the north, lesser caucasus, are this kind of broad zone in the south. The mountains are nearly as onerous. It's still mountainous, it's still difficult,

but there are a lot more corridors that access this area. And in this zone, it's traditionally not been the Russians that have been the major power. It's been either the Turks or the Iranians. Well, let's see here. Problem that the local powers have always had, those Turks and Armenians, is accessing one another's lands. The Turks and the Iranians have always had a bit of a problem rubbing up against each other.

There are a number of mountain passes and access points in corridors that allow access, but they're all seasonal and limited, with one exception, and that is this right here. This is the Arras River, and this is the best point of access between Anatolia or Turkey or the Turks and Persia or Iran and the Arabians. The thing is, Stalin again, it's split. So in the north, the northeast section of that corridor is controlled by Armenian. It's home to the Armenian capital of Yerevan. The northwest chunk is controlled by the Turks and is home to Mount Ararat.

The southeast chunk is Nakhivan and it is controlled by the Azerbaijani's, and the southwest chunk is Iranian right here in Iranian-Azeriz. So goes the thinking. The Iranians are really happy with the current state of affairs because if this corridor is split into four different chunks, then no one can really use it to pour Turkish power down into northern Azerbaijan. However, what's going on with the Azerbaijani's is they want a corridor that crosses this zone of southern Armenia and directly links Azerbaijan to Nakhivan and.

And then there's a road and rail system here that goes into Turkey proper. If that happens, and you have Turkish power controlling over half of the corridor, and the Turks can directly reinforce Baku by road and by rail. And from the Iranian point of view, this would be a disaster. It would be a disaster from Armenian point of view as well. Not only would they lose control of some of their southern territories, but then they would be completely locked off and surrounded by Turkish power. And if you're familiar with your history, the Armenian Genocide carried out by the Turks in World War I was pretty brutal.

And so the Armenians are looking for anything, anything to kind of grab onto a degree of independence. They need a security ear and tour. And if they can't have the Russians, then the Iranians are the only other player in town. And Azerbaijan getting control of southern Armenia would basically end that forever. And then it would just be a matter of time before Armenia itself becomes a satrapid of the Turkish system. rather than the Iranian or the Russian system, something that the Armenians would rather avoid. But for the Iranians, this is also a national survival issue because this corridor, if you continue following it south, eventually reaches the city of Tabriz, which is the capital of the northern

region, excuse me, of Iran, and northern Iran is primarily populated by ethnic Azeris, who are basically the same ethnic stock as the folks who run Azerbaijan. So they have always been the group in Iran that the Iranians have been most nerdyers. about exercising a degree of independence. And if the Turks get de facto control of this area, all of a sudden that is very much in play. So we have a situation here where maybe the Russians are leaving stage left because of the situations in Ukraine. They can only focus on the things that are core to them.

And since they control of Khazia and South Ossetia, they control the access points to the northern caucuses. And they're kind of declaring that good enough. But with the Turks now rising, we're going to have a second level of contest in this region between the Turks and the Iranians, with the Azerbaijanis being a very, very, very willing ally. So what we're going to see over the next several weeks a month, something that the United States is concerned about, is this point becoming in play. Because if that becomes in play, then this whole whore or all of a sudden becomes in play. and we need to start thinking about what it means to have Turkish troops in the Kaivan hard on another part of the Iranian border. That's where it is. Okay. I think that's everything. You guys take care.