Hey everybody, Peter zine here coming to you from exciting hotel room. The news I wanted to talk today is about something that has to do with caucuses. Again, for those of you who remember a few weeks ago, the Azerbaijanis launched a fair bit of a lightning assault on place called Nagarjuna, Cara BA, which is an area that was populated with ethnic Armenians and the war was over in less than three days. And pretty much all of the Armenians who are living there have since absconded and left for Armenia proper word, there’s now going to be it looks like a second phase of that conflict, where the Azerbaijanis are likely to invade our immediate proper. What’s going on here is that the Azerbaijanis are looking for a land corridor to connect to parts of the country. In order to explain the significance of that we’re gonna have to do a little bit of screen sharing here to Google zoom, which was Earth, which is one of my favorite programs ever. Anyway, here we are looking at where the former Soviet space in the north meets with the middle east and the south and the Caucasus is this mountainous land bridge in between. And let’s just go ahead, shoot a little bit more. Okay. So the northern caucuses where the Greater Caucasus is this line here, very rugged, very steep, leading to a lot of ethnic minorities, like you would expect in any number of mountainous zones. This is an area where the Russians have always had a problem at the Chechens, if you remember them live right here. And then you’ve got these two little enclaves in the north of Kazuya. Here in South Ossetia here, where the Russians have sent in troops and basically occupy them and make them de facto Russian territory by and some people would say that the Russians have basically tried to do this in Ukraine as well. But it’s I think it’s important to understand that for the Russians, it’s all about controlling the access point. So that’s Ukraine, where that’s the wars that they’ve launched here in kasi and South Ossetia, the Russians know that their population is dying out. So they believe that they given forward position troops in the access points that they will have an easier time defending themselves. So there is a close road here and of kausea, there’s a past that links the Northeast session Province, which is part of the Russian Federation, with the SE session Province, which is part of Georgia, and they’re trying to plug those access points. So you’re gonna see a lot of this, whether it’s in Central Asia, or the Western periphery, that is your Europe, and that actually is kind of relative to the discussion about what’s going on, and then Subversion and we’re media. Now here we’ve got the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, the capital of years back who has got about half the population the entire place, the former Soviet republic of Euro vam, independent Armenia is right here. Get the Turks over here, and the Iranians to the south. Now, zoom in a little bit more. Okay, your van capital of our medium, Mount Ararat is a zone that supposedly Noah’s Ark crashed into as the floods receded. It is the national symbol of Yerevan of the Armenians and it is not in their territory, it’s in Turkey, but they can see it a dominance of skyline from the capital, the Gerber, Cora baz, this mountainous zone over here, this is the area that the Azerbaijani has recently liberated from Armenian control. And the Chi oven, which is right here is that chunk of Azerbaijani territory, that the Azerbaijanis would like to physically connect to the country. And if all of this seems like just cartoon graphic spaghetti it is. And you can thank Joe Stalin for that. Because at the time that the Soviet Union was gaining control of this area in the 20s, he went through and modified all the borders to make sure that if any of these areas ever got independence, again, that would immediately be at one another’s throats, and he wielded his pen with extreme levels of skill. So let’s get a little bit closer. The dominant issue in this area actually isn’t the Russians. The Russians had a defense agreement with the Armenians until very recently, I’m gonna guess technically, it’s still in force. But the Russians have moved most of their troops out, move them to Ukraine, because they need every pair of hands and every gun they can get. And that’s kind of held this area frozen. But once you get into the lesser caucuses remaining remember, greater caucuses, which are the North lesser caucuses are in this kind of broad zone in the south. The mountains aren’t nearly as onerous. It’s still mountainous, it’s still difficult, but there are a lot more corridors that access this area. And in this zone, it’s traditionally not been the Russians that have been the major power. It’s been either the Turks or the radiants. Well, let’s see here. problem that the local powers have always had those Turks and Armenians is accessing one another’s lands. The Turks and the Iranians have always had a bit of a problem rubbing up against each other. There are Number of mountain passes and access points and corridors that allow access. But they’re all seasonal and limited, with one exception. And that is this right here. This is the RS river. And this is the best point of access between Anatolia or turkey or the Turks, and Persia or Iran and the Arabians, the thing that is stalling again, it’s split. So in the north, the Northeast section of that corridor is controlled by Armenia, and it’s home to the Armenian capital of Europe and the northwest chunk is controlled by the Turks and is home to my era. The SE Chuck is Nick Ivan, and it is controlled by the as Johnny’s and in the southwest choke is Iranian right here in Iranian Azerbaijan. So goes the thinking the Iranians are really happy with the current state of affairs, because if this corridor is split into four different chunks, and then no one can really use it to pour Turkish power down into northern Azerbaijan. However, what’s going on with the Azerbaijanis is they want a corridor that crosses this zone of southern or media and directly links, Azerbaijan to the Chi oven. And then there’s a road and rail system here that goes into Turkey proper. If that happens, and you have Turkish power controlling over half of the corridor, and the Turks can directly reinforce back KUBU by road and by rail. And from the the Iranian point of view, this would be a disaster, it’d be a disaster from our median point of view as well. Not only would they lose control of some of their southern territories, but then they would be completely locked off and surrounded by Turkish power. And if you’re familiar with your history of America, Armenian Genocide carried out by the Turks in World War One was pretty brutal. And so the Armenians are looking for anything, anything to kind of grab onto a degree of independence and to secure gear, a security gear and tour. And if they can’t have the Russians, and the Iranians are the only other player in town, and Azerbaijan, getting control of southern or media would basically end that forever. And then it would just be a matter of time before urbini itself becomes a satrapy of the Turkish system rather than the Iranian or the Russian system, something that the Armenians would rather avoid. But for the Iranians, this is also a national cervical issue, because this quarter if you continue following it itself eventually reaches the city of Tabriz, which is the capital the northern region, excuse me, Everon. And northern Iran is primarily populated by ethnic Azeris who are basically the same ethnic stock as the folks who run Azerbaijan. So they have always been, though group in Iran, that the Iranians have been most nervous about exercising a degree of independence, and at the Turks get de facto control of this area, all of a sudden, that is very much in play. So we have a situation here where maybe the Russian are leaving stage left because of the situations in Ukraine, they can only focus on the things that are core to them. And since they control up kausea and South Ossetia, they control the access points to the northern caucuses, and to kind of declaring that good enough. But with the Turks now, rising, we’re going to have a second level of contest in this region between the Turks and the Iranians with the Azerbaijanis being a very, very, very willing ally. So what we’re going to see over the next several weeks or months, something that the United States is concerned about, is this point becoming in play because if that becomes in play, then this whole or all suddenly comes in play, and we need to start thinking about what it means to have Turkish troops in the cabin hard on another part of the Iranian border. That’s where it is. Okay. I think that’s everything you guys take care