Thursday, May 15 2014

 In 2014 Azerbaijan and Iran "hit the reset button" in their relations, well-known Russian analyst Sergey Markedonov said at the Caucasus-2013 international conference in Yerevan.  

"There were even no signs of such tendencies in 2013. The foreign policy of Iran has certainly changed much since Hassan Rouhani became President of Iran. First of all, Rouhani started settling the top priority problems in the Iranian foreign policy", he said. 
Markedonov thinks that Ilham Aliyev's recent visit to Tehran and his meeting with Rouhani were the first attempt to evade the confrontation between the two countries that had lasted throughout the presidency of Rouhani's predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Today there are all prospects for qualitatively new relations between the two countries.  

The conference is annually organized by the Caucasus Institute with the support of the Academic Swiss Caucasus Net (ASCN). This year the conference covered the reports of representatives of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Switzerland. The reports included a short analysis of the most important developments of 2013 in the South Caucasus countries.