YEREVAN — Senior Armenian officials have thanked Iran for reaffirming its strong opposition to land corridors passing through Armenia in response to Russia’s latest push for the opening of such transport links between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave.
Tehran stepped up at the weekend its criticism of Moscow’s position expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during President Vladimir Putin’s August 18-19 visit to Baku. Lavrov accused Armenia of “sabotaging” a Russian-brokered agreement to build a highway and railway connecting Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan via Syunik, the only Armenian province bordering Iran.
The accusation prompted serious concern from Iran, which fears losing its common border with Armenia. The Iranian Foreign Ministry reportedly summoned Russia’s ambassador in Tehran last week to warn Moscow against contributing to any “geopolitical changes” in the region.
“We do not accept any changes to borders. My advice to Russia and Azerbaijan is to respect these boundaries,” Ali Nikzad, a deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament, said in a weekend post on X.
“We have repeatedly communicated to regional nations that the Zangezur Corridor is a red line for Iran, and any alterations will provoke a strong and serious response,” Ebrahim Azizi, the chairman of the parliament committee on national security and foreign relations, told the ISNA news agency.
A member of the Iranian panel, Fadahossein Maleki, went further, calling Russia’s perceived support for that corridor a “stab in the back” in comments to another Iranian news agency, Tasnim.
“I am grateful for Iran’s concern,” Alen Simonyan, the Armenian parliament speaker told reporters on Monday. “I thank them for the statements.”
“We always live with the understanding that an attack and [aggressive] steps are possible against the sovereign territory of Armenia,” he added without elaborating.
Earlier on Monday, the Iranian Embassy in Yerevan tweeted that the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, thanked Tehran for “supporting Armenia’s territorial integrity” during a meeting with Ambassador Mehdi Sobhani. The embassy also quoted Grigoryan as saying that “no force can break the territorial connection between Iran and Armenia.”
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan made clear that Armenia continues to oppose the extraterritorial corridor to Nakhichevan.
“Armenia excludes the presence of any third force and any third-party control over infrastructure in its territory”, Mirzoyan said at a joint press conference with Xavier Bettel, the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
“Anything that implies the creation of a corridor and the transfer of its control to any other party is not being discussed, and we have said that the presence of third powers and control by third powers is excluded for Armenia, for us it is unacceptable. Nothing has changed in our position,” Mirzoyan said.
