In an article published on Thursday, Ali Akbar Velayati said Pashinian’s pro-Western foreign policy contradicts “the interests of the Armenian people” and opens “a new chapter of hostility and tension in the South Caucasus.” He singled out a U.S.-Armenian agreement on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) that would run along Armenia’s border with Iran.
Velayati said that the TRIPP is tantamount to an extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor” demanded by Baku and opposed by Tehran. He said he repeatedly made clear to senior Armenian diplomats that the project’s implementation remains a “red line” for the Islamic Republic drawn by the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I clearly told the Armenian ambassador [to Iran] the final word that if [U.S. President Donald] Trump and his allies want to cross this Iranian red line, we will break their legs,” he wrote in the Iranian newspaper Ettelaat.
Velayati’s last reported meeting with Ambassador Grigor Hakobian took place in December 2025 more than two months before the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The Iranian official also received Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian in Tehran earlier in 2025. Contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday, Kostanian did not immediately comment on his latest warnings to Yerevan.
Iran - Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, meets Armenian Ambassador Grigor Hakobian, Tehran, December 15, 2025.
The warnings contrast with recent statements by Iranian government officials, notably Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Visiting Yerevan on October 16, Araghchi said the Iranians “trust our Armenian brothers” on the TRIPP and believe “they are doing nothing that would compromise Iran’s security.”
The issue was high on the agenda of Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s October 5 talks in Tehran with Araghchi as well as Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Mirzoyan said afterwards that Tehran is “satisfied” with Yerevan’s assurances that the transit arrangement will not lead to any U.S. military presence along the Armenian-Iranian border.
Velayati also criticized the Armenian parliament for ratifying last week the U.S.-Armenian framework agreement on practical modalities of the TRIPP. The agreement calls for the creation of a joint venture that will build and manage for at least 49 years a railway, a road, energy supply lines and other infrastructure connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave and Turkey. The U.S. government will own 74 percent of the TRIPP Development Company (TDC).