A senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev claimed that Yerevan has an “obligation” to do so under the terms of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
The truce accord commits Armenia to opening rail and road links between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan. It says that Russian border guards will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods. The transport links would presumably pass through Syunik, the sole Armenian province bordering Iran.
The Armenian government has rejected Baku’s demands, saying that Azerbaijani passengers and cargo cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls. It insists on conventional transport links between the two South Caucasus states.
Iran also strongly opposes the so-called “Zangezur corridor” sought by Aliyev. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reaffirmed Tehran’s stance when he met with a visiting Azerbaijani official in October. Aliyev’s top foreign policy adviser, Hikmet Hajiyev, said later in October that the corridor “has lost its attractiveness for us” and that Baku is now planning to “do this with Iran instead.”
But in an interview with Germany’s Berliner Zeitung newspaper published on Thursday, Hajiyev said that the planned construction of a new road as well as a railway connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan via Iran does not mean that Baku has abandoned the idea of the corridor passing through Armenia.
“The route through Armenia is Yerevan’s obligation which they must fulfill,” he said.
Hajiyev confirmed that Baku wants to make sure that Azerbaijani people and cargos travelling to and from Nakhichevan are not checked by Armenian border guards or customs officers.
Aliyev has implicitly threatened to open the corridor by force, prompting stern warnings from Iran. His renewed demands for the corridor follow what Armenian and Azerbaijani officials call major progress made in talks on a bilateral peace treaty.
Armenian opposition leaders dismiss Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s regular assurances that the treaty will preclude another war with Azerbaijan. They also say that he is willing to make disproportionate concessions to Baku and get very little in return, a claim denied by Pashinian and his political allies.
The main purpose of the 2020 ceasefire cited by Hajiyev was to stop fighting in Karabakh and prevent new hostilities. The deal led to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and gave them control over the Lachin corridor connecting the region to Armenia.
Azerbaijan disrupted commercial and humanitarian traffic through the corridor in December 2022 and set up a checkpoint there in April 2023 in breach of the ceasefire. It went on to launch a military offensive in Karabakh in September 2022, forcing the region’s practically entire population to flee to Armenia.