Yerevan and Baku reported last month significant progress towards opening a railway that will connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Syunik. The Armenian government says it will also allow Armenia to have rail links with Iran and Russia through Azerbaijani territory.
The Iranian ambassador in Yerevan, Abbas Badakhshan Zohouri, welcomed such a prospect in an interview with the Armenpress news agency.
“If a process of unblocking [transport links] between Nakhichevan and Yerevan goes ahead, we will have a short and fast railway between Iran and Armenia,” he said. “We are ready to take necessary steps to help establish rail communication through this route.”
“Nevertheless, I want to again remind that the proposed new variants cannot be a reason to neglect the importance of roads passing through Syunik province and the North-South project in Armenia,” added Zohouri.
Zohouri said those roads are “very important” not only for Armenian-Iranian trade but also cargo traffic from Iran’s Persian Gulf ports to Georgia and other Black Sea countries. “This is the principal transit route considered by us,” he stressed.
Armenia lost control over a 21-kilometer stretch of the main highway Syunik connecting it to Iran after a controversial troop withdrawal ordered by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian following the Karabakh war. Last September, Azerbaijan set up checkpoints there to tax Iranian vehicles.
The move triggered unprecedented tensions between Tehran and Baku. It also forced Yerevan to hastily finish work on a 70-kilometer bypass road.
Zohouri said the Iranian side is looking forward to further highway upgrades planned or already carried out in Syunik. He stressed the significance of a multimillion-dollar construction project that would significantly shorten travel time between Yerevan and the Iranian border.
The Karabakh truce accord also commits Armenia to opening a road link between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly claimed that it envisages an exterritorial land corridor passing through Syunik.
The Armenian side denies this, saying that Azerbaijani freight cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi appeared to back Yerevan’s stance during a January 3 phone call with Pashinian.
“Tehran supports the sovereignty of Armenia over all territories and roads passing through that country,” Raisi was cited by his press office as telling Pashinian.
Last fall, some Iranian officials accused Aliyev of seeking to effectively strip the Islamic Republic of a common border with Armenia.
In late December, the Iranian government decided to open a consulate general in Syunik’s capital Kapan.
Commenting on that decision, Zohouri said: “As a rule, hundreds of Iranian trucks pass through Syunik every day. We have many economic and consular issues in Syunik and … need to have a mission there in order to better deal with them.”