The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that the head of its Eurasia Directorate, Mojtaba Demirchiloo, discussed with the Russian ambassador in Tehran, Alexei Dedov, “his views on the ongoing developments in the Caucasus.”
A ministry statement cited Demirchiloo as telling Dedov that “Tehran is against any change in the internationally recognized borders and geopolitical changes in the region.”
“The Iranian diplomat also stressed the need to take into consideration the legitimate concerns and interests of all countries in the region,” added the statement.
Demirchiloo met with Dedov two weeks after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the Armenian government of “sabotaging” a Russian-brokered agreement to open transport links between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province.
The accusation sparked a fresh war of words between Moscow and Yerevan that added to heightened tensions between the two estranged allies. Lavrov repeated it on Monday.
He and other Russian officials point to Paragraph 9 of a November 2020 ceasefire deal that stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It says that Yerevan will “guarantee the security of transport links” between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan and also stipulates that Russian border guards will “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods through Armenia’s Syunik province.
Armenia - The Armenian flag is hoisted at a military base on the border with Iran, October 7, 2021.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have disagreed, at least until now, on practical modalities of doing that. Baku wants people and goods moving between Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan to be exempt from Armenian border controls.
The Armenian side insists, for its part, that the two South Caucasus states should have only conventional transport links guaranteeing their full control over all transit routes passing through their respective territories. Lavrov complained in January that Yerevan “doesn’t want neutral border and customs control” in Syunik, the only Armenian region bordering Iran.
Iran also opposes the extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor” demanded by Baku. Its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed Tehran’s stance when he met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on July 30. The Zangezur corridor would be “detrimental to Armenia,” Khamenei was reported to say.
“We have seen statements by Iranian officials expressing concern about the idea of opening the so-called ‘Zangezur corridor’ and explaining the reasons for this attitude,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told reporters last week.
Zakharova did not say whether there are major differences between Moscow and Tehran on the issue.