Political analysts doubt the ban on sale of weapons from USA to Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has not bought weapons from the United States, but has all the means to protect its sovereignty, political analysts in Baku said in their comments on a possible ban on the supply of American weapons to Azerbaijan.

The initiative pursues political goals and has no military significance, Azad Isazade, a military expert and a former employee of the Information and Analytical Department of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence (MoD), has stated.

"Without the resolution, the USA doesn't supply weapons to Azerbaijan as a country in a state of a military conflict. The initiative is backed by the Armenian lobby, which is quite strong in America," Mr Isazade told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent on July 17.

In his opinion, even if the legislative initiative goes through all the procedures and acquires the force of a law, this will not limit Azerbaijan's ability to hit the planes that invade its airspace. Azerbaijan possesses sufficient resources to shoot down military aircrafts too.

Tofig Zulfugarov, a former head of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), has treated the prospects for legitimating Mr Sherman's initiative as "vague."

"The political field of the House of Representatives of the US Congress has always been an activity place of Armenian lobbyists. The difference in the number of the congressmen who voted for and against the initiative made only a couple of dozen. This only shows that achieving this result was not easy and faced serious opposition of those congressmen that support the policy of the Trump's administration," Mr Zulfugarov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

That is why, according to his version, "the entry into force of this decision seems extremely vague."

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on July 18, 2019 at 11:58 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.