Kocharian claimed that it would only benefit Azerbaijan and Turkey and be used by the United States for stepping up pressure on neighboring Iran.
“The TRIPP (Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity) is an Armenian-American project for Azerbaijan and Turkey,” he told a news conference. “This is probably the most accurate definition. The Armenian interest is not visible here at all.”
The TRIPP would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s strategic Syunik region bordering Iran. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian agreed to the controversial arrangement during his talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by U.S. Trump at the White House last August.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan released the first major details of the TRIPP after meeting in Washington on January 13. A joint U.S.-Armenian “implementation framework” confirmed that a special company controlled by the U.S. government will build a railway, a road, energy supply lines and other infrastructure along Armenia’s border with Iran and manage them for at least 49 years.
“The U.S. has zero economic interest in the South Caucasus, all of this is connected to one circumstance: Iran,” said Kocharian. “There is no other motive than taking control of the border with Iran.”
Iran’s negative reaction to that would leave Armenia caught in a regional “collision of major geopolitical powers,” warned the 71-year-old ex-president leading one of Armenia’s main opposition groups.
“The TRIPP will become our biggest security threat,” he said.
Pashinian dismissed the claims, saying that Kocharian’s knowledge of regional geopolitics is “outdated.”
“The TRIPP is first and foremost an economic investment project, and this project will involve multi-million dollar investments in Armenia,” he told reporters.
Tehran has repeatedly expressed serious concern over the TRIPP, saying that it could put the Armenian-Iranian border at serious risk and lead to U.S. security presence there. A senior aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated last month that it is therefore unacceptable to the Islamic Republic.
Other Armenian opposition figures have likewise said that the TRIPP could undermine Armenian control over that part of Syunik. They claim that Pashinian has accepted Baku’s demands for the movement of people through the corridor to be exempt from Armenian face-to-face border checks.
Pashinian has acknowledged that modern technology could be used to exclude physical contact between Armenian officers and Azerbaijani travelers. But he has downplayed this fact, saying that Armenia would become a commercial transit hub and gain rail links with Iran and Russia.