Despite the slander and unbridled rhetoric of the dictator of Baku [i.e., Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev], Azerbaijan faces a number of challenges which immediately followed the end of the euphoria that covered this country. Iranian studies specialist Vardan Voskanyan, who is also a member of the opposition Homeland party of Armenia, wrote this on Facebook.

"It is obvious that the huge increase in the military-political influence of the pan-Sunni [Muslim] axis of the so-called Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood)—in the form of Turkey and Pakistan—has caused internal tension points (…) in Azerbaijan, a country with a traditionally Shiite [Muslim] population, leading also to an increase in fractures between the pro-Turkish and pro-Iranian sections of the [country’s] population.

This is contributed also by Iran's rather active external pressure on the dictator of Baku (…).

With virtually the same policy, the pressure on Azerbaijan has been increased also by Russia, which, although it does not have considerable groups of adherent or supporter population inside this country, it has an active and major lever of influence in the form of the peacekeeping contingent (i.e., the military base) stationed in Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)].

As paradoxical as it may seem, the virtually unlimited Turkish influence and the certain loss of Azerbaijan's sovereignty cannot arouse the enthusiasm among another supporter of the dictator in Baku, the Israeli political leadership, which already has to compete with the [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan regime to maintain its influence.

If we add to this the problems that exist in relations with some European Union member states and the United States, the dictator of Baku often has to play the role of a tightrope walker—figuratively speaking—who tries to maintain balance while swaying on the delicate domestic political and international rope—also with irregular movements of the tongue," Voskanyan added.