Iran expressed concern about foreign interference on Saturday, fearing it had been carved out of a declaration brokered by Donald Trump between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The two countries have come closer to ending 35 years of enmity by signing a peace treaty in Washington and agreeing to a US private consortium taking control of a strategic corridor on Iran’s border.
The corridor passing through southern Armenia will link Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhchivan, a longstanding demand of Baku. The US will operate the corridor under Armenian sovereignty on a 99-year land lease, changing the balance of power in the region. Some Iranian commentators claimed the deal amounts to “Iran’s geopolitical suffocation in the region”.
Control of the corridor that runs along the border between Armenia and northern Iran has been the single biggest block to a peace deal between the two countries.
The deal is also a further blow to Russia’s diminished influence in the region, as Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, guides his Christian-majority country towards the west, and eventually the EU. Russia – which still has a military base in Armenia – seems unable to resist the Trump initiative, partly due to its preoccupation with Ukraine.
In a statement on Saturday the Iranian foreign ministry said: “Establishing communication networks will serve the security, and economic development of the nations of the region when it is done within the framework of mutual interests, respecting the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries of the region, and without foreign interference”.
Abbas Mousavi, former Iranian ambassador to Baku and a deputy presidential spokesperson, described Trump’s direct involvement in the issue of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia as “interesting, offensive and dangerous”.
But there is little Iran can do to block a deal that the US, Armenia and Azerbaijan see as in their mutual interest.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in conflict since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan, the superior military power which is largely run as an authoritarian dictatorship, wrested back full control of the region in 2023 by force, prompting almost all of the territory’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
In the most novel part of the deal, an – as yet unformed – US consortium will take control of a 20-mile-long transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. It will be named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”.
The proposal, first discussed during the Biden administration, raises the prospect of a US presence right on the Iranian border. Tehran worries such a development might cut off its access to the Black Sea as well as to Europe via Georgia.
A further opening of the border with Turkey would integrate Armenia into the Middle Corridor project, an economic trade route between Europe and China that bypasses Russia and Iran. Armenian leaders have long seen economic benefits in this project for their landlocked country.
The White House said the new transport corridor would “enable unhindered connectivity between the two countries, while respecting the sovereignty, territorial integrity and people of Armenia”. The route is billed to include roads, railways, oil and gas pipelines and fibre-optic lines. A US commercial presence lowers the incentive for either side to resort to military solutions.
As part of the Washington accord, the two sides have also agreed to end other border disputes, but Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, stressed in press briefings that a final agreement required the Armenian constitution to be amended to eliminate “baseless territorial claims” against Azerbaijan, adding to not do so would be seen as “an act of disrespect” by the US. Armenia is expected to hold a referendum on the constitution in 2027, but the more Aliyev highlights his demand, the more hostility will grow inside Armenia.
But Aliyev, and his ally Turkey, gain greatly from the agreement so may not look for obstacles. As part of the agreement, for instance, restrictions on military cooperation between Azerbaijan and the US can be lifted. Aliyev said: “We have pre-signed the Peace Agreement, which has been negotiated for a long time, and the fact that it is pre-signed in the capital of the No 1 superpower, in the world’s No 1 office, and in the presence of the great president of the USA, means that there should be no doubt that any of the parties will make a step back.”
He also called for Trump to be awarded the Nobel peace prize.
