The new Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his kingdom—modern-day Georgia—which had been annexed by Tsar Paul I several years after the Russo-Persian War of 1796.

[4] Earlier, in 1783, the Georgian king Heraclius II had signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with Russia, bringing his kingdom under Russian protection and swearing allegiance to Empress Catherine.

[4] On the Iranian side, the capture of Shia Muslim territory was seen as an outright invasion that carried the risk of further losses and the imposition of foreign rule.

[10] As Elton L. Daniel notes, Fath-Ali Shah saw the Russian threat to Iran's northwestern territories "not only as source of instability [...] but as a direct challenge to Qajar authority.

"[4] The Russians were unable to commit a large portion of their troops to the Caucasus region, because Alexander's attention was continually distracted by simultaneous wars with France, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden and Great Britain.

Having captured Ganja, Tsitsianov turned to the Khanate of Yerevan (Erivan), the territory of which could serve as an invasion route to Tiflis from the south.

[12] In the meantime, Fath-Ali Shah sent a letter to Tsitsianov requesting that he leave Tiflis and place Prince Alexander, who had earlier fled to Iran, on the Georgian throne.

Tsitsianov sent back a hostile response, prompting the Shah to send Abbas Mirza toward the South Caucasus at the head of an army of 20,000 or 30,000.

[14] Mohammad Khan of Yerevan, caught between the approaching Iranian army and the Russians, offered his submission to Tsitsianov, but the latter responded with more threats and harsh demands.

[15] Abbas Mirza arrived in Iranian Armenia and encamped on the Zangi (Hrazdan) River half a league from the city of Yerevan on June 7.

[16] Mohammad Khan, hoping for the arrival of the Russians, refused Abbas Mirza's demand to come out of the city and join him, and the two sides fired upon each other.

He requested provisions from Georgia, but the peasants there refused to provide the grain, and a rebellion occurred along the Georgian Military Road, temporarily blocking the passes through the Caucasus Mountains.

Although this Russo-Persian War was in many respects a continuation of a struggle for supremacy in Transcaucasia dating back to the time of Peter the Great and Nader Shah, it differed from earlier conflicts between Persia and Russia in that its course came to be affected as much by the diplomatic maneuvering of European powers during the Napoleonic era as by developments on the battlefield.

Following the Russian occupation of the various khanates, Fath Ali Shah, strapped for cash and anxious to find an ally, had made a request for British support as early as December 1804.

Hoping to forge a tripartite alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia, Napoleon sent various envoys to Persia, notably Pierre Amédée Jaubert and Claude Matthieu, Count Gardane, whose diplomatic efforts culminated in the Treaty of Finckenstein, signed on 4 May 1807, under which France recognized Persian claims to Georgia and promised assistance in training and equipping the Persian army.

Although Russia had been making peace overtures, and Jones had hoped the preliminary agreement would encourage a settlement, these developments strengthened Fath Ali Shah 's determination to continue the war.

Anglo-Persian relations warmed even further with the visit of Abu’l-Hasan Khan to London in 1809 and his return to Persia with Gore Ouseley as ambassador and minister plenipotentiary in 1810.

Britain, like France after Tilsit, was thus obliged to steer a course between antagonizing Russia and violating its commitments to Persia, with its best option being to broker a settlement of the conflict between the two.

The Russians had been periodically interested in finding a negotiated settlement since the setbacks of 1805–6 and as recently as 1810, when Alexander Tormasov, who had replaced Gudovich as commander after his unsuccessful siege of Erevan, and Mirza Bozorg Qaem-magham had sought to arrange an armistice .

Ouseley, however, realized the awkwardness of having Britain's resources deployed against its Russian ally and that the situation for Persia was likely to worsen once Russia was freed from the struggle with Napoleon.

He proposed revisions to the Definitive Treaty, scaled back British military involvement (leaving two officers, Charles Christie and Lindesay Bethune, and some drill sergeants with the Persian army), and threatened to withhold payment of the subsidy promised to the Qajars.

Then, on 31 October 1812, while Ritischev was away in Tbilisi, the general Peter Kotliarevski launched a surprise night attack on the Persian encampment at Aslanduz, which resulted in the complete rout of the army of Abbas Mirza and the death of one of the British supporting officers (Christie).

As it also became increasingly apparent that Napoleon's offensive in Russia had failed disastrously, the Russians were emboldened to pursue a more aggressive campaign in the Caucasus.

Under the Gulistan treaty, Russia was acknowledged as the power in control of the South Caucasus; western and eastern Georgia and the Muslim khanates until Baku and Quba were placed under Russian administration.

The Treaty of Bucharest was in favor of the Ottoman Empire which had claimed the territories that Russia conquered during the war: Poti and Anapa, which were Black Sea port cities, as well as Akhalkalaki.

At Aslanduz on the Aras, 2,260 Russians under General P. S. Kotlyarevsky fought a two-day battle with 30,000 Persians under Abbas Mirza, killing 1,200 enemy soldiers, and capturing 537 at a loss to themselves of only 127 dead and wounded.