Yerevan and Tehran Tighten Relations, Raising Problems in Zengezur where Transit between Armenia and Iran will Cross US-Managed Corridor between Azerbaijan and Nakhichivan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 19 – During a visit to Armenia, Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian signed ten cooperation agreements with Armenian President Nikola Pashinyan. Among them are accords that call for expanding links between Iran and Armenia in energy and trade through Armenia’s Syunik Oblast, more commonly referred to as the Zengezur corridor.

            Those north-south links will cross the east-west ones between Azerbaijan proper and Nakhichivan, the Azerbaijani exclave, a corridor that an American company will supervise for the next 99 years (eurasiatoday.ru/armeniya-i-iran-podpisali-10-memorandumov-o-sotrudnichestve-kakie-imenno/).

            How the intersection of those routes will be managed is likely to create difficulties between Armenia and Iran, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan and the US, on the other, difficulties that won’t necessarily torpedo the recent accord between Yerevan and Baku but that have the potential to make the development of these corridors far more difficult.

            Notably, when the negotiations that led to the agreement on a transit corridor between Azerbaijan and Nakhichivan, very little was said about how such an intersection would be managed. But ensuring that both routes can function will likely be key to guaranteeing not only transit but peace in the south Caucasus in the future.