National Interest: Armenia bought the Iskander to restrain Baku’s aggression

PanARMENIAN.Net - In an article published on The National Interest, Armenian political analyst Areg Galstyan suggests that the country has acquired Iskander missiles from Russia as a system for restraining Azerbaijan’s aggressive plans.

Written to address a number of misconceptions contained in a recently published feature on the Washington Post, the article clarifies that Nagorno Karabakh is the historical territory of the Armenian people, which was transferred to Soviet Azerbaijan, created by the Bolshevik government for political purposes.

“The Soviet Union was striving for territorial expansion against Iran; creating a republic with the name Azerbaijan, Moscow expressed its claims to the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan. Thus, transfer of the Armenian territories of Nagorno Karabakh and Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan was based on pragmatic geopolitical calculations by the Soviet leadership,” Galstyan says.

“If we carefully analyze Azerbaijan’s aggressive rhetoric, coupled with systematic violation of the ceasefire and diversionary actions against the civilian population, we can understand why Armenia purchased the Iskander system from Russia. Iskander systems are viewed by official Yerevan not as an element of intimidation, but as a system for restraining the aggressive plans of Baku.”

Azerbaijan on April 2, 2016 launched a large-scale military offensive against Karabakh, which claimed hundreds of lives on both sides. Top Armenian and Azerbaijani defense officials reached an agreement on the cessation of hostilities on April 5 in Moscow.

Four Iskander systems have been delivered to Armenia and displayed for the first time at the military parade marking the 25th anniversary of the country’s independence.