America’s foreign policy has become a moral blackout. Billions are poured into nations that actively enable the destruction of Christianity’s oldest strongholds, then act shocked when ancient churches burn and priests are dragged from altars. The latest casualty is not in Gaza or Ukraine, but inside Armenia itself — the world’s first Christian nation — where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is waging an unprecedented war against the Armenian Apostolic Church.
If we are serious about defending persecuted Christians, this should be the final straw that forces us to rethink our blank-check alliance with Israel. Armenia adopted Christianity as its state religion in 301 AD — 13 centuries before the United States even existed.
For 1,700 years, the Armenian Apostolic Church has been the unbreakable spine of a people who survived Persian fire temples, Arab caliphates, Mongol hordes, Ottoman genocide and Soviet atheism. When there was no Armenian state, the Church was the state — preserving language, script and faith in mountain monasteries and diasporan enclaves. One of the reasons the 1915 genocide targeted Armenians was because they were Christians. The Church’s survival was nothing short of miraculous.
Yet today, in the independent Republic of Armenia, the government is trying to finish what the Ottomans started. Since mid-2025, Pashinyan has:
This is not reform. This is Bolshevik cosplay with better PR. Pashinyan’s real crime, in the eyes of the opposition, was his willingness to cede Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to Azerbaijan — the same Azerbaijan that expelled 120,000 Armenians in 2023 with Israeli drones circling overhead like vultures.
And who made Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing possible? Israel. Between 2016 and 2022, Israel supplied 69% of Azerbaijan’s weaponry — kamikaze drones, missile systems, cluster munitions — turning Baku into a regional juggernaut. In return, Azerbaijan pumps 40-55% of Israel’s crude oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, keeping Tel Aviv’s tanks rolling and its economy humming. When Armenians were fleeing Stepanakert under fire, Israeli technicians were reportedly on the ground in Azerbaijan helping calibrate the very drones that bombed their churches.
Under the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016, the United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in military aid annually — no questions asked — knowing full well that Israeli arms are being traded for oil secured by expelling Christians. Then, we watch silently as Armenia’s own government, desperate for Western approval and Turkish-Azerbaijani favors, turns against the Church that helped keep Armenian identity alive through centuries.
This is not geopolitics. This is a coordinated assault on Christianity itself.
If our mantra of “religious freedom” means anything, it must mean this: No more American dollars for nations that arm the persecutors of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
Condition every penny of aid to Israel on an immediate, verifiable end to arms sales to Azerbaijan. Demand that Pashinyan release imprisoned clergy and halt his takeover of the Church. And if either government refuses, turn off the tap.
If our mantra of “religious freedom” means anything, it must mean this: No more American dollars for nations that arm the persecutors of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
The Armenian Church is not just a national institution; it is a living witness to the Resurrection. When its bells fall silent — whether under Azerbaijani shells or Armenian police batons — the loss belongs to every Christian on earth. We have ignored the cries of Gaza’s Catholics, Ukraine’s Protestants, Lebanon’s Maronites. We cannot ignore Armenia. Because if the first Christian nation can be stripped of its faith by governments we bankroll, then no church is safe.
America once sent missionaries to the world. Now, we send Hellfires. It’s time to choose which legacy we want history to remember.
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