Page 84 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

84 I Eurasia bne February 2022
from Tehran, claims the Iranians are intent on developing nuclear weapons – to conclude the Vienna talks with the “coma option”.
The option has been described by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. Under the scenario, explained Parsi, in which the negotiations to resurrect the nuclear deal have become almost deadlocked, the JCPOA “would all but die, but the parties would pretend that it is still alive to avoid the crisis that its official death would spur. Let’s call it the coma option. Think of how Western powers have pretended that the Israeli-
Palestinian peace process has been alive for the last decades”.
The US last week accused Iran of walking back previous diplomatic progress made in the Vienna talks earlier this year.
However, neither the US nor Israel are making the case that an Iranian nuclear bomb could be imminent. Israel has lately stated that Iran is likely around five years from having a nuclear weapon if its current rate of development progress continues, while William Burns, director of the CIA, on December 6 told
The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit: "We don't see any evidence as an agency right now that Iran's supreme leader has made a decision to move to weaponize [nuclear know-how]".
Burns described Iran's challenge as
"a three-legged race" to obtain fissile material, to "weaponize" by placing such material into a device designed to cause a nuclear explosion and to mate it to a delivery system such as a ballistic missile.
On weaponization, Burns said "the Iranians still have a lot of work to do there as far as we judge it".
persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin".
Presiding judge Joan Donoghue said Azerbaijan must protect from violence and harm "all persons captured in relation to the 2020 conflict who remain in detention" and must "prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage".
The same day, in the second case (Azerbaijan vs Armenia), the first rulings were also issued. In the court statement, the ICJ ordered Armenia to “take all necessary measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred, including
by organizations and private persons
in its territory, targeted at persons of Azerbaijani national or ethnic origin”. As for another Azerbaijani request, regarding a call to prevent Armenia destroying evidence of ethnically motivated crimes against Azerbaijanis, the court found these measures “are not warranted”.
Analyzing the outcomes of the two initial rulings, human rights lawyer Gabriel Armas- Cardona that regarding the protection
of Armenian cultural sites, the ICJ “gave Armenia everything it asked for”. For the second suit, meanwhile, Armas-Cardona noted with surprise that Azerbaijan had received “only 1 of its 6 requests” in its ICJ suit, fewer than expected.
Armenia filed its ICJ suit on September 16. Azerbaijan filed its countersuit on September 23.
Azerbaijan was ordered to protect Armenian prisoners of war.
In first ICJ rulings, Armenia
largely comes out on top of
Azerbaijan
Neil Hauer in Yerevan
The first rulings in a pair of landmark cases at the International Court
of Justice – with Armenia suing Azerbaijan for inciting racial hatred and abusing prisoners of war and Azerbaijan’s countersuit on anti-Azeri racism in Armenia – have largely gone in favour
of Yerevan.
On December 7, in the first case (Armenia vs Azerbaijan), judges at the ICJ examining Armenian allegations
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that Azerbaijan breached a convention against racial discrimination ordered Azerbaijan to prevent incitement of racial hatred against Armenians and protect Armenian prisoners of war.
The statement included a demand that Azerbaijan must "take all necessary measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred and discrimination including by its officials in public institutions targeted at