Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian phoned his newly appointed Iranian counterpart, Majid Takht Ravanchi, late on Thursday to congratulate him on his new post.
In an X post, Kostanian said he also “appreciated Iran’s support to Armenia’s territorial integrity” and “exchanged views on recent developments in this regard.” He gave no other details.
“I reiterated our strong desire to strengthen relations with all our neighbors,” Takht Ravanchi tweeted shortly afterwards. “I also expressed our principled position on inviolability of international borders. I gladly accepted [Kostanian’s] invitation to visit Yerevan.”
Other, more senior Armenian officials thanked Iran earlier this week for reaffirming its strong opposition to land corridors passing through Armenia in response to Russia’s latest push for the opening of such transport links between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sparked an uproar in Tehran with his August 19 statement accusing Armenia of “sabotaging” a Russian-brokered agreement to build a highway and railway connecting Nakhichevan to the rest of Azerbaijan via Syunik, the only Armenian province bordering Iran. The Islamic Republic fears that such a corridor, which Baku wants to be extraterritorial, would strip of it of the common border with Armenia.
Iran - An Iranian honor guard displays Iranian and Armenian national flags at an official ceremony in Tehran, 7 August 2017.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry reportedly summoned Russia’s ambassador in Tehran last week to warn Moscow against contributing to any “geopolitical changes” in the region. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tweeted on September 5 that they are a “red line for Iran.” Senior Iranian lawmakers and government-linked media outlets openly denounced Moscow in the following days.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday deplored the “the anti-Russian information campaign” in Iran and denied posing “threats to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Armenia.” The ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, also said Moscow has provided the Iranian side with “all the necessary clarifications on this matter.”
The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, reportedly heard similar assurances from his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu at a meeting in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday. Ahmadian was also received there on Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The latter did not mention Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links in his opening remarks at the meeting.
Zakharova insisted that Russia only wants Armenia to comply with Paragraph 9 of a Russian-brokered ceasefire deal that stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. It says that Yerevan will “guarantee the security of transport links” for Nakhichevan and let Russian border guards “control” the movement of people, vehicles and goods through Syunik. The Armenian government maintains that it is not obstructing the implementation of this provision.