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Amid Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian synagogue defaced as local anger over Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan grows
(JTA) — Vandals threw red paint on an Armenian synagogue on Tuesday, in the latest sign of increasing tensions between Armenia and Israel as Israeli arms sales have fueled Azerbaijan’s offensive in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The paint was smeared on the Mordechay Navi Jewish Religious Center in Yerevan, what is thought to be the only synagogue in Armenia’s capital city. Most estimates put the number of Jews in Armenia at a few hundred.
The Conference of European Rabbis — an organization of Orthodox rabbis led by the exiled former chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt — tied the act of vandalism to posts it shared from a nationalist Armenian group that had circulated on pro-Armenian social media pages at the time.
“The Jews are the enemies of the Armenian nation, complicit in Turkish crimes and the regime of Aliyev, stained with the blood of the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh,” one post read, referring to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“The Jewish state provides weapons to Aliyev’s criminal regime, and Jews from America and Europe actively support him,” the post continued, according to the Conference of European Rabbis. “If Jewish rabbis in the United States and Europe continue to support Aliyev’s regime, we will continue to burn their synagogues in other countries. Every rabbi will be a target for us. No Israeli Jew will feel safe in these countries.”
Despite that threat, the Armenian synagogue that was defaced was not burned on Tuesday, according to reports and photos from the scene.
Israel and Azerbaijan have developed close relations in recent years, as Azerbaijan provides Israel with approximately 40% of its oil resources. According to reports, Israel supplied up to 70% of Azerbaijan’s military arsenal in the years leading up to 2020. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Azerbaijani cargo planes were seen leaving Israel last month.
Israeli officials have said that the arms relationship is partly due to Azerbaijan’s geographic proximity to Iran, a country that routinely calls for violence against Israel. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran,” Arkady Mil-man, Israel’s former ambassador to Azerbaijan, told the AP.
Over the past two weeks, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijani troops began fighting with Armenian rebels, reigniting of a conflict that flared in 2020 and left thousands of fighters dead. The region — which is part of Azerbaijan but has a population that is ethnically and culturally tied to Armenia — was the site of a war in the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Armenian officials have begun to express concern over Israel’s military support of Azerbaijan. “For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Armenian Ambassador to Israel Arman Akopian told the AP. “I don’t see why Israel should not be in the position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being expelled from their homeland.”
Azerbaijan has also striven to cultivate ties with global Jewish groups, including the Conference of European Rabbis, which is slated to hold a meeting in Baku in November. The Rabbinical Centre of Europe, a group of European rabbis associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, issued a statement last month condemning Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for using the word “genocide” to describe the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Pashinyan also told Agence-France Presse that Azerbaijani troops have created “a ghetto” in the disputed region.
“Senior Armenian government officials… employed the language and comparisons that are appropriate solely to describe the deliberate, systematic and largest genocide in the history of mankind, which the Jewish people have been subjected to: The Holocaust,” the statement read. “Such words as ‘ghetto,’ ‘genocide,’ ‘Holocaust’ and the like [are] in no uncertain terms inappropriate to be part of the jargon used in any kind of political disagreement. Usage of these terms belittles the terrible suffering experienced by the Holocaust victims and the entire Jewish people.”
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The post Amid Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian synagogue defaced as local anger over Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan grows appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘With or Without Russia’s Help’: Iran Pledges to Block South Caucasus Route Opened Up By Peace Deal
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – Iran will block the establishment of a US-backed transit corridor in the South Caucasus region with or without Moscow’s help, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader was quoted as saying on Saturday by the Iran International website, one day after the historic peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“Mr. Trump thinks the Caucasus is a piece of real estate he can lease for 99 years,” Ali Akbar Velayati said of the so-called Zangezur corridor, the establishment of which is stipulated in the peace deal unveiled on Friday by US President Donald Trump. The White House said the transit route would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.
“This passage will not become a gateway for Trump’s mercenaries — it will become their graveyard,” the Khamenei advisor added.
Baku and Yerevan have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting or forcing almost all of the territory’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Yet that painful history was put to the side on Friday at the White House, as Trump oversaw a signing ceremony, flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The peace deal with Azerbaijan—a pro-Western ally of Israel—is expected to pull Armenia out of the Russian and Iranian sphere of influence and could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran.
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UK Police Arrest 150 at Protest for Banned Palestine Action Group
People holding signs sit during a rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, August 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
London’s Metropolitan Police said on Saturday it had arrested 150 people at a protest against Britain’s decision to ban the group Palestine Action, adding it was making further arrests.
Officers made arrests after crowds, waving placards expressing support for the group, gathered in Parliament Square, the force said on X.
Protesters, some wearing black and white Palestinian scarves, chanted “shame on you” and “hands off Gaza,” and held signs such as “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” video taken by Reuters at the scene showed.
In July, British lawmakers banned Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest against Britain’s support for Israel.
The ban makes it a crime to be a member of the group, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, last week won a bid to bring a legal challenge against the ban.
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‘No Leniency’: Iran Announces Arrest of 20 ‘Zionist Agents’
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addresses a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 20, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
i24 News – Iranian authorities have in recent months arrested 20 people charged with being “Israeli Mossad operatives,” the judiciary said, adding that the Islamic regime will mete out the harshest punishments.
“The judiciary will show no leniency toward spies and agents of the Zionist regime, and with firm rulings, will make an example of them all,” spokesperson Asghar Jahangiri told Iranian media. However, it is understood that an unspecified number of detainees were released, apparently after the charges against them could not be substantiated.
The Islamic Republic was left reeling by a devastating 12-day war with Israel earlier in the summer that left a significant proportion of its military arsenal in ruins and dealt a serious setback to its uranium enrichment program. The fallout included an uptick in executions of Iranians convicted of spying for Israel, with at least eight death sentences carried out in recent months. Hit with international sanctions, the country is in dire economic straights, with frequent energy outages and skyrocketing unemployment.
In recent weeks Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi affirmed that Tehran cannot give up on its nuclear enrichment program even as it was severely damaged during the war.
“It is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe. But obviously we cannot give up of enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,” the official told Fox News.