The United States’ sanctions against Iran and the unwillingness of most Caspian littoral states to challenge them have sent Tehran’s maritime trade in this sea plummeting over the last two years, reducing its non-petroleum component by half (Financial Tribune, May 27, 2019). But that has... MORE

At this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that transporting Russian natural gas via the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) is technically possible but that Azerbaijan has never received an official proposal for such... MORE

The three countries of the South Caucasus—Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan—found themselves in a precarious situation following the United States’ killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, on January 3, 2020, due to their parallel relationships with both Tehran and Washington. Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan offered... MORE

The politics of Azerbaijan were unusually dynamic in 2019, compared to recent years, shifting dramatically between January and December. President Ilham Aliyev notably continued the transformative reforms he began several years earlier. And almost every month, the Azerbaijani leader caught domestic and international observers by... MORE

The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) political-executive body, the Collective Security Council, held a session on November 27–28, in Bishkek, at which Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared that member states “must leave orders of [the] Azerbaijani side to acquire new weapons unanswered” (Aysor.am,... MORE

Iran’s approach to the three countries of the South Caucasus—Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia—is derivative of its concerns to keep its geopolitical opponents, the United States, Turkey and Israel, from being able to threaten the Islamic Republic from the north. At the same time, despite the... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Azerbaijan on December 2–3. This came after his November 11 Yerevan visit, which caused an uproar in Baku due to Lavrov’s reference to the ethnic-Armenian population in Karabakh as the “people of Nagorno-Karabakh” and his oblique suggestion of... MORE

Russia has long counted on its geographic location between the Asia-Pacific region and Europe to cement its relationship with China. However, Beijing increasingly views Russia as merely a supplier of raw materials (Svobodnaya Pressa, April 27)—a view reinforced anew on Monday (December 2), by the... MORE

On November 7, at 3:30 A.M., a westbound train from Xi’an, China, for the first time ever used Istanbul’s $4 billion Marmaray sub-Bosporus railway tunnel to dispatch goods to central Europe (Haber.sol.org.tr, November 7). The train’s voyage represents another of China’s attempts to shave time... MORE

This past month, Azerbaijan hosted two large inter-governmental gatherings: the 7thSummit of the Cooperation Council of the Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council), on October 15, and the 18th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), on October 25 (Turkkon.org, October 15; Turksoy.org, October 16; Azernews.az, October 25).... MORE