In the press, Yerevan is eagerly trying to sell it as a “win”: apparently commerce will flow, peace will be incentivized, and outside management will guarantee fairness—even security. In reality, the first manufactured crisis, border provocation, or “security” demand from Baku will shred those assumptions completely.
Real peace and lasting stability in the region require solutions based on justice, balanced solutions acceptable to the parties, not residual outcomes built and imposed on coercion and geopolitical trade-offs.
Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan
Today, U.S. President Donald Trump will host Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev in Washington. The meeting will likely end with an agreement on a transit route between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave—packaged as a U.S.-brokered breakthrough, perhaps even branded the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP).
On the surface, this might look like diplomacy. In reality, it follows the classic playbook of the #ShockDoctrine by @NaomiAKlein: exploit a fragile, post-war Armenia—shattered, isolated, and politically cornered—to push through a geopolitical and economic project that serves foreign interests and emboldens regional aggressors, all while Armenia is too destabilized, misguided, and weak to resist.
During the interview with 168 Hours, he mentioned that one type of American ambassador wants to represent Washington, even if it means making the host nation upset, another type of Ambassador will try to ingratiate himself, especially with the dictatorships in the world, thinking that if they have a smooth relationship with the president of the country in which they’re serving, that means that they are a good ambassador.
The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza continues to deepen — yet the world’s understanding of it remains clouded by distance, politics, and selective narratives. In an interview with 168 Hours, Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Yaman Alhelo offers a raw, unfiltered account of life under siege, the failures of global media, and the international community’s reluctance to act.
Pashinyan’s illegal and destructive plan has little chance of success. The Catholicos will probably refuse to resign. Pashinyan’s only remaining option would be to send his armed security agents to arrest the Catholicos on trumped-up charges. If the Catholicos is arrested, no replacement should be elected, allowing Karekin II to run the Church from his prison cell. What an embarrassment for the first Christian nation in the world!
However, on July 14, Pashinyan’s spokesperson, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, contradicted both Safaryan and Badalyan: “Such a proposal is not acceptable to the Republic of Armenia … [which] has not discussed, and is not considering, outsourcing control over its sovereign territory to any third party.” She added: “Armenian law only allows leasing of agricultural land for farming, rendering Ambassador [Barrack]’s proposal legally unfeasible.”
“In order also to reach out to peace, we have to make a distinction between freedom of expression deprivation in a national framework or in an international framework, a national framework, it depends, always by the government. So it’s a decision what kind of behaviors or statements are denied and what not. So what we can do in this case is to create dialog with institutions and also create dialog between international organizations and governments, or between governments.”
