Armenia reassures visiting Iran leader it will control Azerbaijan corridor

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says successful Yerevan that ‘governance successful the Caucasus portion indispensable stay Caucasian’.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that a planned corridor linking Azerbaijan with its exclave would beryllium nether Armenian control, days aft Iran said it would artifact the task included successful a United States-brokered peace accord that puts a imaginable Washington beingness connected its doorstep.

“Roads passing done Armenia volition beryllium nether the exclusive jurisdiction of Armenia, and information volition beryllium provided by Armenia, not by immoderate 3rd country,” Pashinyan said astatine a meeting with Pezeshkian successful the Armenian superior Yerevan connected Tuesday. He added that the corridor would unfastened caller economical perspectives betwixt the 2 countries, and could connection a obstruction way from Iran to the Black Sea seashore done Armenia.

The onshore corridor, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), is portion of a woody signed this month successful Washington betwixt erstwhile foes Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Under the agreement, the US volition clasp improvement rights for the projected route, which would link Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave bordering Iran and Turkey.

“Governance successful the Caucasus portion indispensable stay Caucasian – outsourcing the solution of Caucasus issues to extra-regional forces volition complicate it,” Pezeshkian said during his sojourn connected Tuesday. “Iran’s presumption has ever been to cull immoderate changes to planetary borders successful the Caucasus region.”

Iran has long opposed the planned transit route, besides known arsenic the Zangezur corridor, fearing it would chopped the state disconnected from Armenia and the remainder of the Caucasus portion bringing perchance hostile overseas forces adjacent to its borders.

Since the woody was signed connected August 8, Iranian officials person stepped up warnings to Armenia, saying the task could beryllium portion of a US ploy “to prosecute hegemonic goals successful the Caucasus region”.

The projected corridor has been hailed arsenic beneficial by different countries successful the region, including Russia, with which Iran has a strategical confederation alongside Armenia.

Armenia and Azerbaijan person fought a bid of wars since the precocious 1980s erstwhile Nagorno-Karabakh, a portion successful Azerbaijan that had a mostly taste Armenian colonisation astatine the time, broke distant from Azerbaijan with enactment from Armenia. Azerbaijan Baku took power of the territory successful a subject cognition successful 2023, starring to an exodus of the taste Armenian population.

Armenia past year agreed to instrumentality respective villages to Azerbaijan in what Baku described arsenic a “long-awaited historical event”.