Work on the 7.2-kilometer tunnel officially began at the weekend with a ground-breaking ceremony led by Iran’s Vice President Hamid Pourmohammadi and Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian.
The $400 million project co-financed by the government and the Russian-led Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development is part of an ongoing reconstruction of the main highway passing through Syunik, the Armenian region bordering Iran. It is due to be completed by 2032.
The tunnel will cut through Armenia’s highest mountain pass and thus significantly shorten travel time between the two neighboring countries. It will link up to a 32-kilometer section of the Syunik highway leading to the sole Armenian-Iranian border crossing. Iranian companies have been upgrading that section as part of a separate $215 million contract signed with the Armenian side in 2023. Pourmohammadi and Grigorian inspected the ongoing roadworks before the ceremony.
Another, 60-kilometer section of the mountainous road is to be constructed from scratch. The government has borrowed around $550 million for that purpose from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank.
Pourmohammadi met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Yerevan before attending the ceremony in Syunik and thus underlining the region’s geopolitical significance to Iran. Tehran has repeatedly warned against attempts to strip the Islamic Republic of its common border with Armenia in the face Azerbaijan’s demands for a land corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave passing through Syunik.
Iranian officials have voiced concerns over Yerevan’s decision last year to open such a transit corridor that would be run by the United States. They fear that the transit arrangement could endanger Iran’s border with Armenia and lead to U.S. security presence there.
According to an Armenian government statement, Pashinian discussed with the Iranian vice president not only bilateral economic ties but also “the processes of unblocking regional communications routes.” The statement did not give details. The Iranian side did not issue a readout of the talks.