Ravanchi visited the Armenian capital three weeks after a top aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again warned that the planned Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) would pose a serious security threat to the Islamic Republic.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian agreed to the special transit arrangement during talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on August 8. The TRIPP would run along Armenia’s vital border with Iran. Tehran fears that it could endanger the border and lead to U.S. security presence there. Yerevan has clearly failed to dispel the Iranian concerns with its repeated assurances that the TRIPP will not compromise Armenian sovereignty over the area.
According to official Armenian readouts, “issues related to unblocking regional infrastructures” were high on the agenda of Ravanchi’s separate talks with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan discussed with the Iranian diplomat “programs developed in this direction and opportunities provided through them.” It did not elaborate.
“We understandably attach great importance to relations with our neighbor and friend Iran,” the ministry quoted Mirzoyan as saying. “In essence, for us, these are relations of strategic importance.”
The Iranian side did not issue statements on the talks as of Thursday evening.
Meeting with Armenian Ambassador Grigor Hakobian on December 15, Khamenei’s senior adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, said the TRIPP is “no different” from an extraterritorial corridor demanded by Azerbaijan and strongly opposed by Iran. Velayati said it is unacceptable to Tehran also because it would lay the groundwork for U.S. or NATO military presence along Iran’s border with Armenia.
Pashinian and other Armenian officials downplayed that warning. Hakobian similarly defended the TRIPP later in December.
“As a result of the lifting of the blockade, Armenia will have a railway connection with Iran through the territory of Nakhichevan,” the envoy told the Iranian Tasnim news agency. “This will create an unprecedented opportunity for Iran to establish direct railway communication with Georgia, connecting to the [Georgian] Black Sea ports.”
Earlier this week, Aliyev again insisted that the TRIPP would amount to the kind of a “Zangezur corridor” through Armenia’s Syunik province sought by Baku.
“The Zangezur corridor will be opened,” he told Azerbaijani media. “It may have a different name. But that doesn’t change its essence.”