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Background of Section 907 On August 6, 1992, U.S. Congress passed the Freedom Support Act to accelerate transition to democratic governance and free market economy in Russia and other newly independent states following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Later on, humanitarian, security, and counter-terrorism dimensions were also incorporated into the document. A few months…
On 18-19 August, Russian President Putin came to Azerbaijan on a state visit, the first time ever in the history of Azerbaijani-Russian relations. This time, it was all the more unexpected given the hasty planning of the trip and lack of information about its agenda and purposes. A plenty of interpretations have been put forward…
Since 2020, the peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have faced persistent challenges, with various mediation efforts—spanning Washington, Brussels, and Moscow, which have all collapsed by mid-2023. In fact, there is a deeper crisis in the peace process: despite attempts at bilateral talks and suggestions for Georgia to step in as a regional mediator, as…
Shia Crescent goes “Full Moon” post-October 7 During the Global War on Terror in the early 2000s, King Abdullah II of Jordan coined the term “Shia Crescent” to describe the Iranian grand strategy of large-scale and wide-ranging ideological armed struggle to create a Shiite empire from Tehran to Damascus. There is no other way to…
In the summer of 2022, Azerbaijan began resettling its first village in Karabakh*, a region in its southwest that had been under Armenian control for about 30 years and was partially recaptured during the 2020 war. Since a war in the 1990s, the predominantly Armenian-populated mountainous parts of Karabakh, as well as seven Azerbaijani-majority districts…
As headlines rage over an inevitable war between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Southern Lebanon, Hamas is using this time out of the spotlight to regroup, realign, and reposition. Eyes on the Israel-Hamas War are quickly shifting toward the north as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a reduction of…
On May 13, India signed a 10-year agreement with Iran to develop and operate the port of Chabahar on Iran’s south-eastern coast along the Gulf of Oman. The deal has been long in the making as New Delhi has sought viable transport routes to Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East that bypass its regional…
On April 17, 2024, an extraordinary development – something that does not happen every day – swept through the region and shocked the observers: the Kremlin confirmed the early withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Karabakh, a year ahead of schedule. Back in 2020, around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers arrived following Moscow’s mediation of a ceasefire that halted the fighting between…
