Igor Morozov: "Tensions in South Caucasus may lead to uncontrollable chaos"

Past week was difficult for Syria, Iran and Armenia. Syria still suffers from massive missile strikes, carried out by the United States, Great Britain and France on April 14. Iran anticipates revision of the nuclear deal, "velvet revolution" continues in Armenia. Russian senator Igor Morozov commented on these events in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.

- Tomorrow Moscow will host meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey as guarantor countries of the Astana process, which mediates Syrian settlement. How do you evaluate current situation in Syria?

- Situation in Syria is pretty difficult. We know that the US and coalition will try to destabilize it. The fact is that they don't have initiative in the peaceful settlement. This means they can't bring puppet government to power in Syria, like they did in several countries with their "color revolutions". That' why they will lead situation in Syria to controlled chaos. That's why these staged chemical attacks, followed by massive air strikes, are happening in Syria. Civilians are dying in these attacks, which leads to destabilization of situation in Syria.

Of course, it's very difficult to restore Syria in these conditions, or at least conduct negotiation at the interstate level, at the level of multilateral formats, in order to attract foreign investments.

- Tomorrow ministers Lavrov and Zarif will have a separate conversation "on the sidelines" of trilateral ministerial meeting. Perhaps they will discuss future of the Iranian nuclear program. If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will be broken, just like Donald Trump wants, what consequences will it lead to?

- It's impossible to revise the JCPOA. Russia, Iran or China won't agree to that, and those are states that participated in formation of the negotiating platform that developed this agreement. I think that the US, no matter how much they try to make their Western allies bend to their will, can't change anything. Otherwise Iran will simply abandon all obligations it took and will begin to develop weapons.

It will jeopardize the JCPOA. There will be new countries that will try to develop nuclear weapons, missile weapons, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Such situation would be extremely dangerous. We understand this, Americans don't. Or maybe they deliberately want to break the JCPOA.

- Yesterday Lavrov held a brief meeting with Armenian foreign minister Nalbandian, during which they discussed situation around Nagorno-Karabakh and how will events in Armenia affect it. How will processes taking place today in Yerevan affect the Karabakh conflict settlement?

- Any revolution, any protests that lead change of regime through violence, undoubtedly affect external unresolved conflicts. So if the government, acting prime minister, MPs are overthrown, a series of uncontrollable scenarios that will affect the Nagorno-Karabakh isssue may happen. And tensions in the South Caucasus will lead to new clashes, as well as to uncontrollable chaos.