TEHRAN: Iran will not allow the creation under a US-brokered peace deal of a corridor near the Iranian border linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave, an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday (Aug 9).
The planned corridor, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”, is a key part of a peace deal signed at the White House on Friday between Azerbaijan and its longtime foe Armenia.
However, the proposed route, in which the United States will have development rights, passes near the Iranian border and Khamenei’s international affairs adviser Ali Akbar Velayati said Iran would not accept it.
“With the implementation of this plot, the security of the South Caucasus will be endangered,” Velayati told the Tasnim news agency,
He said the planned corridor was “an impossible notion and will not happen”, while the area would become “a graveyard for Trump’s mercenaries”.
Iran has long opposed the planned transit route, also known as the Zangezur corridor – fearing it would cut the country off from Armenia and the rest of the Caucasus, and bring a foreign presence to its border.
“We have the right to defend our interests in a completely powerful manner,” Velayati said, adding that Iran had held multiple military exercises in the area to show its “readiness”.
