YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh warned against foreign power interference in regional affairs as he met on Tuesday, February 24, with his Armenian counterpart Suren Papikyan visiting Tehran amid the growing risk of US military action against the Islamic Republic.
“The security of the region must be ensured through interaction and cooperation among the regional countries, and Tehran is sensitive to the interference of extra-regional countries,” Nasirzadeh told Papikyan, according to the official IRNA news agency.
“Some interventions are driven by malicious intent and could threaten the region’s stability,” he said in an apparent reference to the United States.
Iranian officials have repeatedly issued such warnings in recent years as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has sought to reorient Armenia towards the West amid heightened tensions with Russia, its traditional ally. They have expressed serious concern at the Armenian government’s plans to open a US-administered transit corridor for Azerbaijan that would run along the Armenian-Iranian border.
Tehran fears that the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) could endanger the border and lead to US security presence there. A top aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described it in December as a serious security threat to Iran. Yerevan has clearly failed to dispel the Iranian concerns with its repeated assurances that the TRIPP will not compromise Armenian sovereignty over the area.
“Armenia will never be the source or origin of any threat to its historical neighbor and it believes that Iran’s stability guarantees the stability of the region,” IRNA quoted Papikyan as saying during the talks with Nasirzadeh.
