According to a senior aide to Raisi, he also spoke out against “any European military presence” in the region.
The two presidents met in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on the sidelines of a regional summit. A statement on the talks released by Aliyev’s office cited them as praising Azerbaijani-Iranian relations and pledging to deepen them.
“President Raisi made clear to president Aliyev of Azerbaijan that any change in historical borders, regional geopolitics and Iran-Armenia transit routes is not tolerable,” tweeted Mohammad Jamshidi, a deputy chief of the Iranian president’s staff.
“Also, any European military presence under any guise is rejected,” he said. “The West can't distract us strategically.”
It was not clear if Jamshidi responded to the European Union’s plans to deploy later this month civilian monitors to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan where heavy fighting left at least 280 soldiers dead last month.
Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian agreed on the launch of the two-month monitoring mission at their October 6 meeting in Prague with French President Emmanuel Macron and EU chief Charles Michel. The mission will seek to prevent another upsurge in violence along the border.
Iran’s top army general, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, said on September 22 that Tehran “will not tolerate” attempts to redraw neighboring Armenia’s borders.
Bagheri echoed warnings repeatedly issued by Iranian leaders both before and after the outbreak on September 13 of large-scale fighting at various the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. One of those sections is in Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering Iran.
Baku has been pressuring Yerevan to open a special land corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Syunik.
The Armenian government rejects these demands while expressing readiness to restore conventional transport links between the two South Caucasus states. Tehran also opposes the land corridor, fearing a loss of Iran’s common border with Armenia.
Armenian officials have claimed that Baku could try to forcibly open such an “extraterritorial corridor” through further military action against Armenia.