Michael Rubin’s October 11, 2026, article, “Will the Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Be the Latest to Come Undone?” portrays Azerbaijan as an obstacle to peace. Yet Armenia occupied Azerbaijani territories for nearly three decades, despite four U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding withdrawal. His dismissal of the Khojaly genocide disregards atrocities documented by international human rights organizations and its recognition by parliamentary bodies in numerous countries and international organizations.
Rubin interprets President Ilham Aliyev’s references to “Western Azerbaijan” as evidence that he is not genuinely committed to peace. Yet referring to places in present-day Armenia from which Azerbaijanis were forcibly displaced does not constitute a territorial claim. In a 1993 speech, Armenia’s former president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, described the removal of Azerbaijanis as resolving a 600-year-old problem.
In 2022, Azerbaijan proposed five principles for normalization, including recognition of territorial integrity and renunciation of territorial claims. At the August 8, 2025, Washington summit, both countries initialed a peace agreement. Azerbaijan subsequently lifted restrictions on cargo transit to Armenia, facilitated grain shipments and petroleum exports, and supported civil society exchanges. The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) offers further regional connectivity.
These practical achievements and confidence-building measures demonstrate Azerbaijan’s commitment to sustainable peace and constructive engagement with the United States.
Sultan Zahidov
Leading Adviser,
Center of Analysis of International Relations and Multiculturalism
Baku
I thank Mr. Zahidov for his reply, but he essentially recycles old Azerbaijani government talking points. He ignores the constitutional actions of Nagorno-Karabakh to assert its autonomy and the United Nations Security Council’s endorsement of the Minsk Group process to address disputes. As a mediated agreement approached and mediators dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s, Azerbaijani President Aliyev unilaterally turned to force—days after assuring diplomats he would not do so—and ethnically cleansed the entirety of Nagorno-Karabakh, much as it had in Nakhichevan. In both regions, Azerbaijan went farther and destroyed centuries and millennium-old cultural heritage.
Against this backdrop of the ethnic cleansing of more than 100,000 indigenous Christians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Zahidov’s complaints about a cherrypicked statement more than three decades old during the height of war ironically supports the premise of my article—that Azerbaijan appears unprepared and is undermining peace.
Zahidov makes other actual errors. Azerbaijan’s former president cast doubt on the Azerbaijani narrative regarding Khojaly that has grown more exaggerated with time.
While Mr. Zahidov describes some supposed “confidence-building measures,” he ignores the hostages that Azerbaijan continues to hold, the failure to prosecute Azerbaijani soldiers caught on video beheading Armenian captives, and Azerbaijan’s military occupation of Armenian territory across the demarcated border, which, in addition to the broader blockade and revanchist rhetoric about Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan,” suggest Aliyev is no more sincere now than when he broke the ceasefire, shredded previous agreements, and launched the largest ethnic cleansing in the broader region since the Bosnian War.
According to Freedom House, Azerbaijan runs one of the world’s most brutal police states, worse than China, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, Cuba, and Belarus. The world learned a lesson when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 that revanchist rhetoric matters, especially when economic downturns force dictators to look for distraction. This is why the international community must take Aliyev’s continued threats seriously.
Michael Rubin