Today, hundreds of people in the Armenian social media space are casting themselves as seasoned Iran experts or Middle East specialists, commenting on yet another escalation of hostilities. I do not count myself among them, because I possess no information beyond what is available to everyone through the international news wires.
What I can speak about are things that, to me, seem obvious and indisputable. The objective of the United States is not to derail Iran’s nuclear or missile programs, as is hypocritically claimed in Washington, but to bring about regime change in a government it dislikes. (I do not like the ayatollahs’ regime either. But unlike Donald Trump, I believe that this issue should be handled by the people of Iran, not by the “Tomahawks.”)
If the regime in Iran changes in the way the U.S. envisions, the result will not be democracy. It will resemble what we have seen in Iraq, Libya, or Syria. Such a scenario in a neighboring and friendly country is by no means in Armenia’s interest. A strong Iran — even if it does not openly intervene in Armenian-Azerbaijani or Armenian-Turkish relations — remains, in any case, a restraining factor for our less-than-friendly neighbors.
As for the so-called “Crossroads of Peace,” in the current circumstances even mentioning it sounds like mockery.
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Trump, who boasts almost daily that he has stopped six (or seven, or eight — depending on his mood) wars, has now, together with Israel, embarked on military actions that in scale could surpass all the wars he supposedly “ended.” I do not call this latest escalation a “new war,” because war in the Middle East — with the Middle East’s main trigger being the Iran-Israel confrontation — has never truly ceased. It merely alternates between relatively calm and sharply acute phases.
Of course, the U.S. would hardly be acting with such aggression were Russia not weakened by its war against Ukraine. As in the cases of Syria and Venezuela, Moscow limits itself to statements of condemnation, invoking international law. It would be better not to invoke it at all, because what Russia has been doing over the past four years — attacking Ukraine in 2022 — is itself a blatant violation of that same law. It is, indeed, a parade of hypocrisy.
…Recently, Trump established a “Peace Council.” Does that council have nothing to say about attacking Iran? It is about as “authoritative” as the United Nations.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
