Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed: Hello, everyone. Welcome to ANN Groong’s Week in Review for June 14, 2026. Hello, Hovik.
Hovik: Hey, Asbed. How’s it going?
Asbed: It’s going.
Asbed: We have a few topics on hand today. We’re going to talk about the U.S.-Iran interim so-called agreement or MOU. We’re going to talk a little bit about the Armenia-Georgia relations and then the Armenian election aftermath.
Hovik: Sounds like a plan.
Asbed: Okay. Well, let me start with the Iran topic. Over this past weekend, the U.S. and Iran agreed to some kind of a framework of discussion, not a final peace settlement by any means, but a remotely and digitally signed agreement to stop the months-old war. The core bargain is relatively simple.
Stop the fighting now, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift or ease some immediate U.S. pressure, and push the hardest issues into a 60-day negotiation window. So the agreement is expected to be formally signed in Geneva, Switzerland. this coming Friday, with talks continuing on sanctions, uranium stockpiles, and Iran’s nuclear program.
Hovik: Yeah, I have a lot of questions about this deal, but the main one is what’s in it for Iran?
Asbed: Well, supposedly, it helps Iran in a couple of ways. It theoretically ends the active U.S.-Iran fighting without regime change language, without language about the nuclear stockpiles, without any language about missile programs or anything like that. It also gives Iran sanctions relief, supposedly a bunch of their funds overseas are going to be unfrozen, although both sides say conflicting things about that. And it lifts the naval blockade around Iran also.
And then finally, it postpones all of the topics that Iran doesn’t particularly want to discuss because it thinks that those issues encroach on its sovereignty, for example, the nuclear question and the ballistic missile question, etc.
Hovik: And what’s in it for the U.S.?
Asbed: First of all, supposedly it’s going to lower fuel prices. It lowers fuel pressure, reopens a key shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, and gives Trump a de-escalation claim after a very costly conflict. And, you know, U.S. citizens will tell you about that. Markets, of course, are loving it.
The U.S. stock market is up sharply today. Oil prices have fallen because of the talk about Hormuz and military operations are supposed to stop at this point.
Hovik: Right. Well, allow me to be a little bit pessimistic about any deal. I think that one of the biggest demands set forth at the beginning of this conflict was that Iran’s regional allies should be dismantled. That was Hezbollah.
Now, we know that part of this deal that Iran is putting as a precondition is the issue in Lebanon. Israel is still actively engaged in Lebanon.
And Iran has argued that any deal must include a halt to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, where of course there is a Hezbollah presence. and the U.S. had essentially tried to treat Lebanon separately but Iran’s foreign minister just reconfirmed that fighting on all fronts must stop including Lebanon and of course Israel said it will not withdraw from Lebanon and it does not commit to this deal so one of the obvious questions is that how many cards does Israel hold in all this and considering the overwhelming control of the U.S. legislature by the Israel lobby, I think that not everything is as peachy as some would like to believe.
The short takeaway from this deal I see is that, okay, we might get a 60-day reprieve, less fighting. There are some terms in the deal that maybe we should discuss. I think Iran is claiming that it will get access to its frozen funds. The U.S. is saying no, but then there’s some news that those frozen funds can be funneled through Qatar, so indirectly to Iran.
Asbed: Which is kind of funny because some of the conflicting stuff that I’ve heard is that Qatar does not want to allow any of the frozen funds to be released. specifically. So who knows exactly if these funds are actually going to be released or not?
Hovik: I mean, I’m just going to go back to the reasons why this war started. It was about the right for Iran to enrich nuclear material up to a certain point. It was about Iran’s global or regional prominence, right? Its network of allies.
And Israel is in an existential war against exactly that, not uranium enrichment. It will find many other reasons to conflict with Iran but if Israel’s goal is to curtail any potential for Iran to become a regional power and its allies are part of it, then I don’t see a full resolution to this. But I guess we should be careful and we should watch what’s happening. But given also Trump’s own history of manipulating media, I will believe it when I see it.
Asbed: First of all, I think that the conflict was not about just nuclear stockpiles and everything. It was about the existence of Iran as we know it today. They really wanted to dismantle this regime and the whole country and make a whole bunch of little Balochistans out of it. just like they’ve destroyed Syria and they’ve destroyed Iraq, and more. Anyway, you’re right, you’re absolutely right that the Lebanese issue is a major, major risk to the entire discussion and I’ll call it agreement or MOU, memorandum of understanding because anyone can stop it.
Iran can say that the U.S. didn’t deliver on Lebanon so there’s no deal. Hezbollah can suddenly hold everything hostage and start attacking Israeli settlements or whatever, and suddenly those people will say the agreement doesn’t exist. And of course, Israel can keep a veto on the whole thing. And by continuing its occupation of Lebanon, then suddenly we don’t have an agreement.
So the short of it, Hovik, I don’t want to go on and on on this topic. The short of it is that the deal may end the hostilities between Iran and the United States. They may open Hormuz. They may calm the financial markets.
I think they’re actually calming the financial markets, at least for the day. And that’s going to make Trump happy. And he’s going to be able to say he’s achieved peace for the next thousand years.
Hovik: I will put a big asterisk after every single instance of the word may that you said. A lot still remains in the air and I’m not so optimistic as you. I’m not optimistic. You’re not going to assign that to me.
Asbed: I have. Well, I’m saying may because there’s the possibility. We’re indicating that the possibility exists. But for me, if you ask me what I believe, I believe that the U.S. is just kicking the can down the road because its military needs to reload.
I’ve read some reports that their stockpiles are very low, even though they are denying this. Of course, they would deny that and they need a break. And that’s where we are. You know what?
We have said this before. Iran is a huge country. It’s twice the size of Turkey. It’s bigger than California and Texas combined.
It’s almost as big as Alaska. It’s a giant country. It’s got a quarter of our population. We, when I say we, the United States can’t just carpet bomb the problem out of existence.
Iran is there and will be there tomorrow. So let’s move to our next topic.
Hovik: All right, let’s talk about the elections. And I’m trying to think of if even the word elections is a good word. Maybe the selections or the predetermined elections. Last week, we talked about the very suspicious last minute drop of the vote percentage for Prosperous Armenia Party, or Bargavach Hayastan.
That happened at the very last minute shortly before the CEC announced the final results and we learned that suddenly they dropped from 4% to 3.996%. Now that, that 0.004% can essentially change the entire landscape or makeup of the parliament, not that Civil Contract will lose, but it essentially could mean that Civil Contract will get three-fifths majority. And that means they elect all the judges unilaterally and so forth. So what happened?
Last week,
Hovik: the CEC was supposed to initiate recounts in all the precincts where there were objections. or at least in most of them and the deadline was Friday so they did the recounting and of course, immediately the Prosperous Armenia Party announced obvious falsifications or discrepancies, maybe I don’t know which is a better word, and the discrepancies are between the votes that were tabulated that everyone agrees you know during the counting, and the votes that were reported to the CEC by the clerks of the precincts. And that’s where the 0.004% discrepancy arises.
Asbed: So, Hovik, can I put perspective on this 0.004 percent or whatever? We are talking about 60 to 70 I’m not sure, let’s call it 65 votes out of a turnout of 1.5 million votes. Okay, 1.5 million voters cast their ballots. We’re talking about 65 votes here.
Hovik: Yeah, and some in the opposition believe, we’re confident that after the recount, the Prosperous Armenia Party would reclaim all those votes.
Asbed: I mean, you can claim those people were optimistic, not me.
Hovik: Okay, so the recount happened, precinct by precinct, not in all precincts, as I said, but many. And guess what? PAP did get some of those votes back from the obvious discrepancies.
Asbed: Okay, Hovik, I’m going to guess that that’s not the end of the story here.
Hovik: How did you know that? So during the recount, the CEC flat out invalidated all of the votes at two or three precincts, again, very suspiciously, because they claimed, well, you know, soldiers voted in these precincts at late hours and so forth. And guess who lost over 200 votes in these precincts? Why do you even ask me?
We know this. Prosperous Armenia. So because of those two precincts or two or three I forget that they completely flat out invalidated Prosperous Armenia lost 213 votes. So yes, they got back 65 votes, but an entire precinct’s vote was invalidated and the CEC claimed that those invalidations Don’t significantly affect the entire vote.
So they said, or they’re not going to do a re-vote in those precincts, even though the law requires them.
Asbed: And that doesn’t make any sense for me, because we are talking about, let’s call it 65 votes, and there were over 200 votes for the party in question here. That got annulled. They got invalidated for absolutely no reason. They basically said, the CEC, the Central Election Commission, basically said that they didn’t want a re-vote, and they annulled the whole precinct because they didn’t want new distortions.
I don’t exactly know what that means, but they didn’t want any new distortions. So basically they took away 200 votes. Does that affect the outcome or not?
Hovik: Of course it does, and in fact, from my following of this matter, various legal experts say that the CEC had two recourses. One was to conduct a rerun election in those precincts where there were significant errors that could not be rectified through the recount process, or if the entire election then falls into question or the makeup of the parliament would fall into question because of the distortions which could not be corrected.
So if the CEC claims that they don’t want new manipulations then the entire election must be annulled and a new one held and I’m not sure if the decision on that is final but I believe that the CEC will not call for a new nationwide election. But again, yes, because of this recount, because of the invalidation, Prosperous Armenia essentially got pushed out.
Asbed: I have a question for you.
Hovik: Whose fault was it? One of the reasons was that the number eight ballot, which is, I believe, for Sasna Tsrer, or Bever. The number 8 ballot was missing in a precinct. That’s directly the responsibility of the CEC.
Of the CEC, absolutely. So it’s not like there were obvious falsifications that they don’t know who caused those. It was directly the cause of the CEC. It was also directly the cause of the soldiers voting after 8 o’clock, right?
The CEC or the precinct chiefs approved that decision to let those soldiers in to vote. So it is also the fault of the CEC.
Asbed: The CEC is completely packed with cronies of Pashinyan. You know, Pashinyan’s longtime buddy is the chairman of the CEC. I have a question, though. Instead of rerunning the entire national vote, what if they were to rerun those two precincts?
Hovik: I mean, we’re talking about 1,223 votes. That’s it.
Asbed: The law mandates that.
Hovik: The law says that if the results of the final vote could be affected by irregularities in precincts, then there should be a re-vote in those precincts only. The law prescribes that. They said they don’t want any new distortions, which is not written in the law. It’s not even the level of administrative resource manipulation, which was big.
This is now flatly against Armenian law. But let me guess, the international community is going to look the other way. And the CEC said, well, if the parties disagree, then they should apply to the Constitutional Court. Essentially, after 2018, Pashinyan also initiated a Constitutional Court standoff where he basically wiped the slate clean and now the Constitutional Court is made up of completely Civil Contract appointees and not just appointees Two or three, many of the appointees were members of Civil Contract shortly before they were appointed.
So they resigned from Civil Contract.
Asbed: And they became neutral overnight.
Hovik: Yes, yeah. So, yeah, I don’t have much hope for the Constitutional Court resolving this. And I’m guessing that, yes, the international community, whatever the so-called international community will say, Yeah, there were a lot of violations, but we need Azerbaijani oil. They won’t say that, but that’ll be the fine print.
We’ll need Azerbaijani oil. We’ll need the Middle Corridor or Zangezur Corridor. So Pashinyan is our guy. So F off, opposition.
Asbed: So, Hovik, where does the picture stand right now after the decision after June 12th?
Hovik: According to the CEC, the Civil Contract vote was now 49.7%, downgraded from 49.8%. Strong Armenia will get 23%; Armenia Alliance will get 9.9%, so 10%, essentially. And what this means is that when you convert it to mandates, it’s probably going to be…
Asbed: I mean, the mandate allocation… And Prosperous Armenia is at 3.99, just to specify.
Hovik: And Prosperous Armenia will be out, and all of the mandates, the five mandates that would go for Prosperous Armenia will probably be reallocated, but… because of the reallocation, Civil Contract will get two of those mandates maybe or three and each one of the opposition parties will get one and what this will mean is that Civil Contract through an illegal, falsified election will get a most likely a three-fifths majority and if they don’t get a three-fifths majority there’ll be one vote short of that And they’ll be now on the lookout for any defectors from the opposition parties, and they’ll use Kompromat, they’ll use many other means to have some of those Strong Armenia or Armenia Alliance members defect if they can.
I think that this will be the next priority.
Asbed: 64 seats is what’s being allocated to them out of 105, which is 61%, so they have three-fifths majority.
Hovik: Yeah.
Hovik: So now the question becomes, what are going to be the moves of the opposition? And I think that they should be collective. But if they accept the mandates, if they announce that these elections were falsified, but we’re going to accept the mandates and go to parliament, Then effectively, we’re going to have the same parliament that we had from 2021, which is that Civil Contract has a comfortable majority, a three-fifths majority, meaning that the opposition can’t veto any major decisions, can’t veto Constitutional Court judges or any major appointments that are constitutional appointments.
Asbed: So six parties today, was it yesterday or today? Anyway, the hours blur, have issued a joint statement, Hovik, and they assert that the election results cannot serve as a basis for the formation of a legitimate government that enjoys the trust of the majority of the people. Strong Armenia, Armenia Alliance, Prosperous Armenia, Bright Armenia, Armenian National Congress , the ANC, and National Democratic Pole, Bever, have made that statement. I mean, I’m not going to go into the details.
They highlighted a lot of issues with these elections.
Asbed: But the question at this point, like you said, is whether the two parties that made it into the parliament take up their mandate or not? There’s a lot of discussion in the media about the pros and cons of taking or not taking up your mandate. But frankly, you know, I have my own opinion. What do you think?
Hovik: I think that it’s going to be difficult, as a party with all those 200 potential members to lay down their mandates. And again, this is where those uncertainties come in. Are all those 200 people on your party list going to be immune from kompromat? or immune from the threat of arrests. If they just arrest someone for, you know, they’ll start looking into the background of all these people, find some minor issue, put them behind bars unless they agree to flip that’s the modus operandi for Civil Contract in general I think that it’s very difficult for laying down the mandates to be successful alone.
So I think that whatever the case, they should take this to the Constitutional Court. They will get rejected by the Constitutional Court, but they should start a street movement in parallel. And the street movement, I think, is going to happen no matter what. The question is, like Arthur Martirosyan said during the last podcast, how successful, how many people can the opposition bring?
How long can they sustain? And what is going to be the timing of the opposition? Because some in the opposition may have differing views in terms of, okay, do we start massive protests until there is a regime change à la 2018 now, or do we wait a few months and do it later? There are going to be a lot of tough questions that the opposition leaders have to answer.
None of them are very satisfying right now in terms of the choices, but the opposition essentially is the only legitimate, the only real way to change this government is going to be through the streets. So the street pressure should start. The question is when? And I think the opposition needs to answer those questions.
Exactly when are they going to do it? Well, it seems like we agree.
Asbed: I also think that the opposition that got into Parliament, Strong Armenia, Armenia Alliance should definitely take up their mandates, but they should also initiate street protests and appeal to the Constitutional Court. All of the above is basically what I think they should do. If they don’t take up their mandate, there are so many ways for Pashinyan to trick them out of the Parliament, install some Mickey Mouse opposition and claim to have enough mandate to change the Constitution through a referendum. At least right now, the referendum issue can be stopped.
Asbed: And we can talk a little bit about that also, because, you know, the Minister of Justice, Srbuhi Galyan, has said that the people have a right to change the Constitution directly. So, she thinks that if they collect 200,000 signatures, they should be able to initiate the referendum on a new Constitution. That’s not correct. Yeah, that’s false.
So tell us.
Hovik: So Parliament is the gatekeeper of any referendum so even if 200,000 people submit their petition the parliament decides ultimately whether a referendum should be held or not that’s the hard-coded into the Constitution. Now, the only way and you need a two-thirds approval so Pashinyan needs not only three-fifths. He needs two-thirds majority in parliament and I think that actually he will be actively working on that by arresting some of the opposition members.
If, let’s say if the opposition accepts their mandates and goes in they will start chipping away at the opposition mandates until they get someone from the opposition in the parliament who might abstain from voting or who might flip to Civil Contract. But it’s going to be a battle because as it stands, if we assume that the people who get into the top of the lists that get into the parliament are going to be hardcore, committed loyalists of the opposition, then a constitutional referendum will not be possible because they will block it but now Well, he needs to get six people.
Yeah, he needs to flip six people and he will those people will probably not be the ones at the top of the ballot so they will start arresting opposition members and I essentially I predict a much harsher, if that’s possible, I predict a much harsher Pashinyan regime after these elections. We already saw that Robert Kocharyan, you know, he was also disallowed from leaving the country. In fact, he was stopped at the airport just last night. He was going to go for two, three days on a personal visit, and that was prevented by the authorities.
And we don’t know the details, but he has basically promised that all of the opposition is going to be arrested. He says that even the votes that the opposition got today, they got because of bribes, because he would get 100% of the vote if this election was without any bribes.
Asbed: I want to talk about those bribes because almost every day for a month, there were constant articles of vote-buying arrests that people mostly associate with Strong Armenia or Armenia Alliance, mostly strong Armenia, actually, because that’s what Pashinyan was afraid of. So every day, if you read their press or if you listen to their videos, they have arrested a couple of people here, a couple of people there. At the end, it was dozens of people accused of vote buying and such. And now, of course, over the last couple of days, they’ve initiated a bunch of new laws so that they are extremely harsh on vote buyers.
They want to make sure they can imprison some people and stuff. Meanwhile, Civil Contract was using very systematic ways. to do vote buying. They spent over a billion dollars of, I hesitate to say taxpayer money because I’m not sure that money was funded. I didn’t see it anywhere in the budget to start some of the projects, but I want you to tell us some of the projects that they initiated to make sure that people felt really, really good about the ruling party in the last month.
Hovik: Yeah, it’s actually, I mean, the taxpayer is on the hook for it, regardless of where they found the money. Yeah, that’s right. But yes, so out of budget, like every time over the last few years, the opposition wanted to increase pensions, and the government said, we don’t have the budget for it, even as late as last December, I believe. Then suddenly, in January, they said, oh, we’re going to increase pensions, even though it’s not budgeted, but it’s a $220 million, I believe, price tag, and it’s every year.
And suddenly they found money from somewhere, maybe through international loans, to implement this. But even worse, last minute they implemented this health reform, which benefits Yeah, it gives benefits to elderly people who need surgeries, like they’re going to fund cataract surgeries and everything. So, but those are things that were on the opposition agenda all this time. So just last minute they implemented, they ran through all these changes that they’ve been promising it for seven years,
Asbed: by the way.
Hovik: Yeah. And during the election, they’re saying, see, we brought you your pension increase. We got you like more health care. but it was all unfunded it was all irresponsible governance and it was all also you know it could have been done in a more manageable way rather than last minute and through questionable sources of funding and the future of this is uncertain so Armenia essentially has a billion dollar extra budget every year because of these changes
Asbed: So basically, they gave you all the benefits, they showed you all the benefits before the election, and now you’re seeing the bill of those benefits after the election.
Hovik: And it’s uncertain how all of that will be covered, especially with all these Russian sanctions coming in as well, but we’re now seeing some of those consequences. One of the government’s first major post-election actions was to raise excise taxes on cigarettes, vaping products, fuel, and other goods. In effect, the bill for these rushed and unfunded spending mandates is now being passed on to smokers and even ordinary consumers. I don’t want to isolate smokers here, but a major percentage of Armenia’s population are smokers, so you are effectively taxing all of the population or most of the population.
Hundreds of thousands of households are smokers. Well, but, you know, it really
Asbed: That falls in line with their prerogatives for the healthcare system, right?
Hovik: Look, I think that that’s a false narrative. I think that an excise tax is more of a general tax-raising measure than to discourage bad behavior. And if they could have done that through the healthcare system, they could have done that through advocacy campaigns. So you can say, hey, you know, I’m trying to discourage smoking and the Eurocrats will rubber stamp that.
But what about the gasoline consumers? What about the other consumers?
Asbed: That’s going to be a pervasive issue. But I want to corroborate what you’re saying here. I want to reinforce it because for the last, whatever, 25, 30 years in the United States, there’s been insane taxing of cigarettes. And let me just say, I don’t smoke, so I couldn’t care less about this issue.
They said, well, we have to put a lot more taxes because these people, smokers, add a lot of stress on our healthcare systems, so they have to be taken care of. I haven’t seen one instance where the public healthcare systems take care of someone who has lung cancer that is due to cigarettes, let’s say. You know, that was all gimmickry.
Hovik: Bad food causes as much heart disease, as much obesity, diabetes, and cancer, which they’re all linked together, cardiovascular diseases, than smoking.
And if you go into any store in Armenia, and if you just look at the shelves 90% of the shelves are stocked with sugary soft drinks with high carbohydrate foods with heavily processed foods so if they actually were sincere about taxing this they would tax sugary soft drinks as well maybe that’s coming down the road but going back to our argument this is all meant to increase revenue and even if we accept that okay smoking will be discouraged then they’ll mean loss of revenue for them so I mean I did some calculations it seems like this extra revenue they get is nothing in comparison to the bill that they already have so maybe they’ll get like a hundred million more in revenue or 200 million more but they have signed up for a billion dollars a year in extra commitments and Armenia was already in a huge amount of debt before so
Asbed: Speaking of bills that were due, who was the first foreign dignitary visitor to Armenia after the election?
Hovik: Well, I mean, you could guess it, but yes, the first dignitary who visited Armenia after Armenia’s pro-Turkish election was Hikmet Hajiyev, Aliyev’s personal assistant on security issues, and he met with Armen Grikorian, and they visited Dilijan. Essentially, I think he came to take stock of to present the invoice.
Asbed: To remind, that’s right,
Hovik: to remind the Armenian government of the agreements that they signed up to. Look, can I just close this election topic by saying these elections were completely falsified. It remains that, you know, what is the opposition going to do? And we are in for a very tumultuous period right now because, as you said, Pashinyan is on the hook for delivering many things now.
Asbed: Well, at least it’ll be a little tougher now. Yeah.
Asbed: Hovik, sorry to put this on you, but talk to us a bit about the Armenia-Georgia relations because it seems like the Europeans are trying to create a little bit of a competition between the two countries. Now that the Europeans feel secure that Armenia is going to be on their side, and they’ve also lost the Georgian side, you know, they’re trying to create a little bit of competition and try to draw Georgia towards them.
Hovik: I’m going to preface this by saying that one of the analysts that I follow and I would recommend you follow, if you know Armenian, is Hakob Badalyan. He has a daily video on Aravot’s YouTube channel. It’s called The Day’s Topic. And he raised a very interesting point because right when Pashinyan announced his victory with only 10% of the ballots counted, the first congratulations came in from internationally, and that was the former president of Georgia, I believe, Salome Zourabichvili, who lives in Paris, by the way, who was a French citizen who used to work for the French foreign ministry.
And, but also, more importantly, Irakli Kobakhidze, the prime minister.
So it was an official Congratulations to Pashinyan with only 10% of the votes counted and you know some may attribute it to Georgians being ambivalent or ignorant about relations with Armenia and they just want to score some points but Hakob Badalyan believes that there is more to this story and he recounts that back in May Kobakhidze announced that the Europeans were trying to create a conflict between Armenia and Georgia because if you recall and this is related to an announcement by von der Leyen who said that Armenia is the shortest path between Central Asia and Europe through the Middle Corridor and she basically endorsed Armenia and the Zangezur Corridor, what the Turks call it, or the so-called TRIPP as the EU essentially blessed that project and they also I think took a few potshots at Georgia but at that time Kobakhidze announced that some Europeans are trying to create tensions between Armenia and Georgia because Georgia right now is de facto the communication link the existing deep communication link between Central Asia and Europe through the Baku-Tbilisi railway right there there is an existing railway it’s underutilized and it seems like the Europeans are trying to create this conflict and competition between Armenia and Georgia and push the Georgians out of the regional communications At that time Kobakhidze said that Europeans will not be successful in dividing Armenia and Georgia, but I think that’s a real issue.
That’s a real problem. and Hakob Badalyan the analyst basically said that this competition could be exploited further by Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan also holds cards so Azerbaijan with cooperation of the Europeans can create a conflict between Armenia and Georgia try to change the balance in terms of corridor traffic if this TRIPP thing happens and then also act as an intermediary and thus exercise influence directly in relations between Armenia and Georgia so not only are the statements by von der Leyen perceived as a way to pressure Georgia to come into the European fold again but they are meant to be also a way to exercise influence and create false divisions between Georgians and Armenians which they later have the cards to rectify and essentially with Azerbaijan it seems that the EU is agreeing that Azerbaijan is going to be the regional hegemon in the Caucasus they’re giving Azerbaijan those cards and together in partnership with Azerbaijan they will control the South Caucasus
Asbed: I don’t exactly know what that means, that they’re agreeing to give Azerbaijan hegemon status.
Hovik: I mean, they have the biggest military or something?
Asbed: Is that what it is?
Hovik: Well, just before the election, António Costa, I don’t know how to pronounce it, the president of the European Council visited Azerbaijan and signed an $8 billion agreement with Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan announced that part of that agreement is that They treat each other as equals which is a very unique language introduced and essentially Azerbaijan and the EU are agreeing according to that agreement to treat each other geopolitically as equals so Hakob Badalyan was basically saying this is essentially a sign that the EU will endorse Azerbaijan as a regional hegemon not through military but through financial deals through geopolitical
Asbed: agreements it’s very complicated on the other hand the U.S. of course is going to treat them as a military hegemon because they’re going to be the bulwark against Iran and Russia And also I think we’ve talked to some Russian specialists to understand what the tension was between Russia and Azerbaijan. This is a while back and one of the things they said is that Aliyev’s ego has been so inflated by the 44-day war victory that he feels himself as a middle power and equal to Russia and Russia does not regard him. Certainly they don’t see Aliyev and Azerbaijan as an equal to Russia. If the EU is simply inflaming those those tensions.
Yeah, it’s not unlikely. You know, I also want to mention, we’re talking about all these things. You talked about the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, and Turkey’s, Azerbaijan’s, and Georgia’s foreign ministers met in Istanbul just this past week and they reviewed their trilateral strategic cooperation agreements. And there was a statement about that.
They called it the Istanbul Declaration between the three of them. And it had to do a lot about these things, basically.
Hovik: Yeah, so I think Georgians essentially are worried about being pushed out of these regional deals through the introduction of TRIPP. And maybe Kobakhidze’s congratulations was a deposit or down payment on whatever support Armenia is going to provide to support Georgia. So the key, I think, regardless of all these external manipulations, the key is going to be partnership between Georgia and Armenia. If Georgia and Armenia regardless of who is the leader of Armenia, remain in strong partnership and remain cohesive, then they will resist external pressure but if they don’t, then any external pressure whether the West wins.
If the West wins they will put all their money down on Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan will be the regional hegemon If Russia makes a comeback, then Azerbaijan still holds cards and it will demand some kind of concessions from Russia in terms of calling the shots in the region as well. So, unfortunately, both Turkey and Azerbaijan have positioned themselves geopolitically to benefit, regardless of whether The West’s TRIPP project succeeds, unless Russia probably makes a very strong military comeback into the Caucasus and tries to dictate terms as a hegemon.
Asbed: As you said, even in that case, even that scenario means that there will be some compromises, and the concessions they make to Azerbaijan, and I’m afraid those concessions will come at Armenian expense, specifically about Nagorno-Karabakh.
Hovik: At Armenian and Georgian expense, yeah.
Asbed: Yeah, yeah, definitely. But, you know, I think the most vulnerable point, the weakest link is the right of return for Artsakhtsis.
Hovik: I mean, longer term, longer term, I think the right of return has been illegally invalidated, like, you know, denounced by Pashinyan or disowned by Pashinyan. But yes, right of return.
But I’m not going to shy away from saying that the right of return with security guarantees with the ability for the people to self-determine because I don’t see how Armenians who can go to Azerbaijan and serve in the Azerbaijani army and so forth and we know the genocidal policies of that state so unfortunately a lot remains unresolved right now but it’s not just the right of return of Artsakh it’s also geopolitical balance you know so if we have a strong Azerbaijani hegemony and by Azerbaijani you also mean Turkish hegemony then it’s going to be bad for Iran it’s going to be bad for Russia and I think those
Asbed: powers should take that into account all right well that’s all we want to talk
Asbed: about today Today is June 15, Monday, June 15, 2026. Thank you everyone for listening and please don’t forget to support us. Go to podcasts.groong.org/donate and become a sustaining member. We are actually spending that money that we are getting, some of you are supporting us and we are receiving a little bit of funding and we are spending it to make improvements.
Those improvements will become more and more clear over the coming months and we’re looking forward to actually freeing up some of our time to do forward-looking projects.
Hovik: Yeah, and that includes new content. We have the app already. It’s a web app right now, and we actually have a working iPhone and Android version that we’ve been developing. It’s going to do more than just notify you about new podcasts.
We’re going to present new content there. We’re going to allow you to download your favorite episodes and listen to them offline. And all of that already exists, but we hit a snag when we tried to register those apps on the App Store. And, you know, there’s a lot of essentially red tape.
Administrivia. Yeah, Administrivia. Please consider, if you can afford it, continuing contributions because actually, for a few months we were back in the black in terms of expenses but given all these extra work, extra infrastructure we’re setting up to support those apps, developing all of those cost money and we’re back in the red right now I think this month and probably the previous month so we need your support podcasts.groong.org/donate
Asbed: I’m Asbed Bedrosyan. We’ll talk to you soon
Hovik: I hope you have a great day