Tehran Sees Talk about Zengezur Corridor as Threat Stability in South Caucasus., Kaleji Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 19 – Iran is very worried that loose talk about establishing a “Zengezur corridor” across Armenia’s Syunik Oblast to connect Azerbaijan with its exclave of Nakhichevan would have negative economic and even military consequences that would threaten the stability of the broader region, Vali Kaleji says.

            The Tehran-based specialist on the Caucasus says Iran favors opening transportation links across that region but only if the sovereignty of the country involved remains untouched and the borders between it and other countries remain where they are (eurasiatoday.ru/chto-bespokoit-i-ne-ustraivaet-iran-v-proekte-sozdaniya-zangezurskogo-koridora/).

            Since Putin’s visit to Baku earlier this month, many Azerbaijani and Turkish commentators have suggested that Yerevan earlier agreed to the opening of a corridor but was now reneging and even that this corridor would involve the transfer of sovereignty from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Baku has denied having such plans, but Tehran is far from certain about that.

            Kaleji says that Tehran has two groups of concerns regarding the reopening or development of a transport corridor through Armenia’s Syunik Oblast. The first is military, he says; and the second is economic. And these concerns are driving Iranian policies regarding the region.

            The Iranian commentator that any corridor arrangement that does not allow Armenia to maintain control over the corridor through its territory will “in fact cast doubt on its territorial integrity and sovereignty.” And that would threaten Iran because it would give Azerbaijan and Turkey an unrestricted ability to move military forces from east to west and west to east.

            And he adds that whatever Baku and Ankara are saying now about passage through Armenian territory, the two would likely move to transform such a military corridor into the basis for taking over Armenia’s Syunik Oblast and thus to create a greater Azerbaijan that would cut Armenia off from Iran and Iran from the rest of the Caucasus.

            At the same time, Kaleji insists that “Tehran will not block the creation of a transportation corridor if it remains under the sovereignty of Armenia and if control of the route will be carried out by Armenians because this is their territory.” But whatever happens, its name “must not be ‘the Zengezur corridor’” because that is an Azeri and a Turkish term.

            He also observes that for Tehran, the proposed Arax corridor through Iranian territory has importance only until Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a peace treaty and agree to transit through Syunik. Once that happens, the Iranian authorities recognize, the importance of any Arax route would be reduced to “zero.”

            Kaleji does not address the implications of this observation, but others in the region will certainly be alive to them. If Iran can count on the Arax corridor only if no peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is signed, might it not be the case that Tehran will do what it can to torpedo or at leas seriously delay any such agreement?