YEREVAN. – Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has three fears: loss of power, loss of territory, and criminal accountability.
Founder and Director of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs, political analyst Styopa Safaryan, told the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am, as he commented on the present-day situation following the four-day Karabakh-Azerbaijan war in early April.
“Now, Baku is at a phase of reviews,” he said. “And much here depends on us [i.e. the Armenian side].”
In his words, Azerbaijan has begun fearing Armenia’s petition to the UN, in connection with Baku’s flagrant violation of international and European law and the law of war.
“If we take such a step, this will deprive Baku of the chance to take future actions,” the analyst added.
Safaryan noted that Azerbaijan has launched three models of attack over the course of these years, all of these models have failed.
“Ilham Aliyev understands very well that, during such great casualties and such large-scale [military] actions, it ‘earned’ only one hill, without a major change in the [Karabakh-Azerbaijan] Line of Contact,” he said. “Therefore it is not that Aliyev is excited by his ‘successes.’ Now, he is at the phase of drawing lessons from all previous attempts, and they need to be very watchful to what decisions Baku is making.”
The analyst noted that the motives behind Azerbaijan’s most recent aggression are the result of a very “dirty game.”
“This was everyone’s game against everyone; this was Russia’s game against everyone; this was Turkey’s game against everyone,” Styopa Safaryan noted. “Everyone had very dirty, far-reaching objectives here. The objectives which the foreign players—Russia and Turkey—pursued were very indirect, [whereas] Azerbaijan’s [objective] was territorial advance.”
