For post-election Armenia managing the changed nature of bilateral relations with Russia and Iran will be of critical importance. Dependence on Russia will grow, while close ties with Iran, based on the specific geopolitical situation of the 1990s, will experience structural changes. Cultivating a qualitatively different foreign policy with the two Eurasian powers will be a major challenge for Armenia’s diplomacy.

Parliamentary elections in Armenia proved competitive, but the results were not surprising. Nikol Pashinyan won ensuring the continuity of his party’s rule in the country. Armenians showed they are in favor of the country’s democratic development. This undermined the rising wave of illiberalism in the form of the Armenian opposition forces. These forces bargained that a widespread disbelief in and grief over the defeat in the Second Karabakh War would help them win the election, largely failed. The opposition pedalled on state security and military stability, but was marred by the lack of democratic norms. Pashinyan insisted on moving beyond the war defeat, finding solutions to the social and economic problems, and bracing for a new geopolitical reality in the South Caucasus. The election results signal that the Armenians are trying to move beyond the Karabakh problem. This does not mean that the general understanding of Karabakh is changing the within Armenian society. It has become evident that the population sees solving the Karabakh issue as contingent upon resolving internal problems rooted in poor governance and troubles inherited from decades-long corrupt rule.

The elections does not resolve deficiencies impeding Armenian governance. Troubles in justice system too will persist. So will hatred and political polarization. The parliament will increasingly serve as the new arena for confrontation between the small opposition and the ruling parties. But the positive process on the surface actually ushers in a long and troubled period when the opposition parties will try to build formidable blocking power to obstruct operation of the legislative. Perhaps street protests will also be common.

Smaller parties did not make into the legislative because of five percent threshold. This could save Armenia from a chaotic coalition forming nightmare, a scary development for states accustomed to strong presidential or parliamentary rule. The underrepresentation of the political forces will make it quite tempting for the ruling party to use its strong position to pursue political dominance – a feature charachteristic of internal politics in all three South Caucasus states.

The election is only the first step in a much more daunting path to sustainable post-war stability and durable institutional democracy. This means that western support for Armenia could be decisive at this particular moment. The EU’s recent decision to increase financial support to Yerevan can be seen as a step in this direction. The EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi discussed with Armenian leaders the planned sharp increase in EU aid while visiting Yerevan. 2.6 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in economic assistance and investments will be disbursed over the next five years.

Surprisingly the biggest challenge for the post-election Armenia is not Azerbaijan, but Russia. An ambiguous ally at best, Russia causes fears and distrust in Yerevan. But the lack of alternatives to the existing close military and economic ties leaves Armenia heavily dependent on Russia with critical issues like Nagorno-Karabakh. Before 2020, the conflict was a sphere where Armenia held some significant tools to leverage its influence in ties with Russia. After the war, all roads lead to the Kremlin. Russian peacekeepers will continue controlling what remains from Nagorno-Karabakh. This is beneficial for Armenia in terms of security, but it also increases Yerevan’s vulnerabilities. Influence on all aspects of Yerevan’s attempts to experiment with multi-vector foreign policy model has failed. Moscow will use Armenia’s deficiency of options on many levels as befits its great-power status seeking thinking.

Therefore the question for Armenia is how to manage the bilateral ties with Russia which are increasingly asymmetrical. In many ways Russia-Armenia relations are also an experiment. A major Eurasian illiberal state and an aspiring democracy are entangled in the regional geopolitics. Since 1990s Russia has not been particularly adept at building constructive ties with neighboring democratic states. Different worldviews usually stall building ties based on equal state-to-state rights. Often diplomatic sparring or even outright military conflicts followed. Examples of Georgia, Moldova or Ukraine suffice. Even Armenia has been no different. Since 2018, when Pashinyan came to power as a result of a peaceful revolution, the Armenia-Russia ties often faltered. Russia has much greater influence in Armenia than in any other neighboring state, but the drive to undermine the effectiveness of the Armenian democratic institutions was present and will remain a trend. Liberal and illiberal states are incompatible in building even relations.

For the post-election Armenia, ties with Iran, critical player in the region, are important because of the recently held elections where Ebrahim Raisi, an ultra-conservative, won the majority of votes. Tehran’s foreign policy towards the South Caucasus underwent serious alterations because of the changed geopolitical landscape following the 2020 war. There was a big misconception in Armenia about Iran. Before the war many in Yerevan considered Iran a de-facto ally. Based on the 1990s thinking when Iran needed to support Armenia because pragmatism dictated so, the same realism foreign policy drove Tehran to change its position and become more open to Azerbaijan regaining the lands in 2020. Pragmatism will continue to dominate Iran-Armenia relations, and this could involve some U-turns on Tehran’s side. Irrespective of who is president and which section of the Iranian political elite he represents, balancing will likely be the key for understanding Tehran’s policies towards Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Thus, Raisi will be no different. Perhaps some efforts from his team will be made to shore up Iran’s faltering position in the South Caucasus, but political realism, devoid of religious sentiments will underwrite Tehran’s policies.

The nexus of Armenia-Iran ties will be trade and transportation routes. Both countries are in need of each other. As Iran signed off on a whopping $400-billion investment treaty with China, chances, though distant, are now bigger that Armenia might benefit from the expansion of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Additionally, there are tentative plans for connecting Iran’s southern ports with the Black Sea via Armenia and Georgia.

The war of 2020 was revolutionary in terms of how Armenia viewed the balance of power in the region. The need to re-think the country’s foreign policy was urgent ever since the end of the conflict, and the 2021 parliamentary elections could serve as a starting point in this direction. Ties with Russia and Iran will have to be managed more carefully than previously.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor at European University and the Director of Middle East Studies at Georgian think-tank, Geocase.