Iranian troops deployed on the border near the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

This Sunday the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced the deployment of its troops along the border with Azerbaijan and Armenia in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been embroiled in a conflict since 27 September without any prospects of change.

"Units of the land forces (of the Guard) have been sent and stationed in the region," said the brigadier general commander, Mohammad Pakpour, according to the IRNA news agency. According to the commander, the mission is "to protect national interests and maintain peace and security".

According to the official news site of the Revolutionary Guard, Sepah News, Pakpour, who has visited the border areas of the Islamic Republic of Iran near the conflict, said that "they do not accept any action that disturbs the security and peace of the people of the region".

The area visited is the border county of Khoda Afrin which borders the territory of Azerbaijan, adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh. Khoda Afrin and nearby villages have reportedly been hit by cross-border mortar fire.

"If there is any repetition of such fire, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not remain indifferent", warned the foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, on 16 October.

In the first week of the fighting, the mortar rounds were repeatedly diverted across the border, and one of them wounded a six-year-old boy.

Since the outbreak of the war on 27 September, there have been three attempts at a humanitarian truce, but all three have been violated by both sides.

"The Armenian Armed Forces in violation of the new humanitarian ceasefire regime are shooting at the city of Terter and villages in the region of the same name," the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

This accusation was refuted by Armenia, which in turn denounced the Azerbaijani army for attacking Armenian positions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

"At 08.45 (04.45) the Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened artillery fire on the positions of the Karabakh Army in the northeast sector," Shushan Stepanian, spokesman of the Armenian Ministry of Defence, wrote on Facebook.

The new humanitarian truce was announced following negotiations between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zohrab Mnatsakanián and Jeihun Bayrámov, respectively, with the mediation of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his "number two", Stephen Biegun, and the White House.
 

This Sunday, the US President, Donald Trump, congratulated the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan and his own team for "achieving the agreement".

Meanwhile, at least a thousand people have died-almost 5,000, according to estimates by Russian President Vladimir Putin-since 27 September in the latest escalation of violence between the two countries over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the self-proclaimed independent republic of Azerbaijan and the subject of a historic dispute between the two countries. The territory is officially part of Azerbaijan, but has a majority Armenian population and has been under Armenian rule since the end of the last war.

For 26 years the area has been experiencing a frozen truce, periodically interrupted by violent spasms.  Baku, who warned over the years that the use of force would be the last resort if the peace process were to be exhausted, has used in its favour the resolutions adopted by the Security Council in 1993 (822, 853, 874 and 884), which called on Armenian troops to leave all these territories. However, on 27 September, according to the Armenian Ministry of Defence, there was an attack on civilian settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, including its capital, Stepanakert. For his part, his Azeri counterpart stated that five members of the same family were killed by an Armenian air strike in Azeri territory.

Yerevan is clear that the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh forms the Republic of Artsaj, and although it has wanted to maintain that it is an independent state, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in 2015 that it is the central government of Yerevan that controls the local administration of Nagorno-Karabakh.