Thursday, July 21 2016 13:31

 "Perhaps the most important geopolitical development of mid-July 2016 was not the continuing conflict in the South China Sea, the failed coup in Turkey, or terrorist violence in France-all of which attracted considerable international attention-but rather the quiet signing, in Moscow, of an agreement by Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani and Indian officials to open a north-south rail line in the Caucasus," says Paul Goble in his article "Moscow 'Bypassing' Armenia to Reach Azerbaijan, Iran and India" published by The Jamestown Foundation. 

Goble believes that the accord will not only link those three countries, but ultimately tie together rail systems from India, by ship to Iran, and on to Europe, via Azerbaijan and Russia. "This will have profound consequences for the states and territories along its route. However, the country most immediately and negatively affected by this new rail system will be Armenia, which is not a party to these arrangements," he says in the article. 

"The Russia-Iran-Azerbaijan-India railroad accord represents Moscow's ongoing efforts to reach an agreement with Baku. These Russian efforts include closer consultations on a range of foreign policy issues as well as an agreement to train Azerbaijani military officers in Russian military academies after a break of two decades.  Furthermore, there are indications that the Russian government is now prepared to push harder for a two-step solution to the Karabakh conflict by pressing Armenia to withdraw its forces from five (of the seven) regions of Azerbaijan other than Karabakh and then later to negotiate about some future autonomous status for the separatist Karabakh territory after that happens.  
That is something most Armenian political leaders and the Armenian public more generally oppose, but now their country may not be able to block such a resolution of this "frozen" conflict," Goble writes.  

In addition, Goble is sure that the July rail agreement "underscores Armenia's declining importance both economically as well as in Moscow's political calculations, highlighting that country's inability to count on what it had assumed was Russia's inevitable support for a fellow Orthodox Christian country (Armenians are overwhelmingly members of the Armenian Apostolic Church-a part of Oriental Orthodoxy). Instead, Russia is moving to increase its ties with majority Shia Islamic Azerbaijan, Armenia's longtime enemy, and now with Sunni Turkey. In this situation, Armenia has no good choices.  

Moreover, Iran is likely to back away from plans to build a rail line to Yerevan, preferring to concentrate on Azerbaijan. And the outbreak of violence in Yerevan this week (starting July 17), where self- proclaimed "revolutionaries" seized a police station and took hostages, may be yet another sign of Armenia's combination of domestic and foreign policy problems." 

Paul Goble is the author of the known plans to settle the Karabakh conflict that were rejected by the sides.  There are two versions of the plan; "Goble-1" and "Goble-2". The first version was approved and encouraged by the Administration of George Bush already in January 1992. "Goble-2" emerged in 1996.  The author accepted that in the first version he had made "a big mistake", since "he hadn't realized what a psychological meaning the common border with Iran has for Armenia." "Goble-2" didn't anticipate any abolition of the Armenian-Iranian borders and didn't allow territorial attachment of Turkey and Azerbaijan.  Instead, "Goble-2" suggested exchanging the southern part of Armenia (the Region of Megri) with the western part of Nakhichevan autonomy, where it has a 9-km border with Turkey. At the same time Nagorno- Karabakh, together with the Lachin Corridor become a part of Armenia, or get independence; the blockade of the Armenia-Turkish border is abolished, the problem of non-enclave existence of Nakhichev Autonomy of Azerbaijan is solved, the border between Armenia and Iran are preserved, and is only moved to north, which has a key geopolitical significance: in this case when being passed to Armenia, the part of Nakhichevan Autonomy doesn't allow any joining with Turkey and Azerbaijan.