The meeting took place on the sidelines of an annual conference on international peace and security held in the German city of Munich.
“Amir-Abdollahian described bilateral relations between Tehran and Yerevan as deeply expanding,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the talks.
He said that senior Armenian and Iranian diplomats should build on this positive dynamic by negotiating a new “document on bilateral cooperation,” the statement added without elaborating.
Amir-Abdollahian was also reported to hail the planned opening of an Armenian-Iranian “transit route” for regional trade. He clearly referred to an ambitious project to create a transport corridor that would connect Iran’s Persian Gulf ports to the Black Sea through Armenia and Georgia.
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, Mirzoyan and Amir-Abdollahian agreed on the need to finalize an agreement on that corridor that would pass through Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province bordering Iran as well as Azerbaijan.
The Iranian ambassador in Yerevan, Abbas Badakhshan Zohouri, said last month that Syunik must remain “the principal transit route” for cargo shipments between Armenia and Iran even after the anticipated launch of Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links. The Iranian side is therefore looking forward to further highway upgrades in the strategic Armenian region, he said.
Armenia - A cargo terminal at a border crossing with Iran, November 29, 2018. (Photo by the State Revenue Committee of Armenia)
The Armenian government last week announced its first step towards attracting potential contractors for the multimillion-dollar construction of a new highway in Syunik that will significantly shorten travel time between Armenia and Iran.
“We hope that by the end of the year we will have [selected] a company that will carry out that work,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said during a session of his cabinet.
Armenia lost control over a 21-kilometer stretch of an existing Syunik road leading to the Iranian border after a controversial troop withdrawal ordered by Pashinian following the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Last September, Azerbaijan set up checkpoints there to tax Iranian vehicles, triggering unprecedented tensions with Tehran.
An influential Iranian cleric accused Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in October of trying to “cut Iran’s access to Armenia.” More than 160 members of Iran’s parliament issued a joint statement warning against “any geopolitical change and alteration of the borders of neighboring countries.”
Meeting with Mirzoyan, Amir-Abdollahian likewise “emphasized Tehran's opposition to any geopolitical change in the region,” according to the Iranian Foreign Ministry.