Iran’s Planned Railway To The Black Sea Will Be Dependent On Azerbaijan

A popular Telegram channel falsely claimed that this is a “checkmate to US/Zangezur plans” and even shared a map showing a different route than what was confirmed in order to mislead their audience.

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan told Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) in an interview earlier this month during his trip to Tehran that his country envisages its recent US-mediated agreements with Azerbaijan facilitating Iran’s access to the Black Sea. In his words, “this will open new doors for railway cooperation between Armenia and Iran, including through the Nakhchivan–Jolfa railway line, which will mean Iran’s access to Armenia and, ultimately, to the Black Sea.”

Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Farzaneh Sadegh soon thereafter met with his counterpart in Yerevan during President Masoud Pezeshkian’s trip there to discuss reopening this corridor. The popular Telegram channel “Geopolitics Prime” then drew wider attention to this in their post about it, claiming that it’s a “checkmate to US/Zangezur plans”, “counters Azerbaijan’s Zangezur Corridor ambitions”, and “block[s] US/Azerbaijani efforts to isolate Tehran.” None of that is true.

As Kostanyan noted in his interview with IRNA, this corridor transits through Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, thus meaning that Iranian-Armenian rail connectivity will be dependent on Baku. There’s a road between them via Armenia’s narrow Syunik Province across which the “Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP, formerly known as the Zangezur Corridor) will transit, but that region’s mountainous geography makes it very expensive to build a North-South railway there.

Accordingly, Iran’s planned corridor to the Black Sea isn’t a “checkmate to US/Zangezur plans”, doesn’t “counter Azerbaijan’s Zangezur Corridor ambitions”, and in no way “block[s] US/Azerbaijani efforts to isolate Tehran” like Geopolitics Prime claimed in their post and others might now soon allege as well. To be sure, Iran can still export its products to the European market via the road through Syunik and then onwards to Georgia’s Black Sea ports, but that’s not as fast or cost-efficient as relying on rail.

Moreover, the EU might either not have much of a market for Iranian products anyhow or the US could pressure the bloc into not purchasing them (given the influence that the US now exerts over the EU after their totally lopsided trade deal), so any Black Sea corridor might not even matter all that much for Iran. Nevertheless, it would still be significant if Azerbaijan and the US don’t interfere with any Iranian exports through Nakhchivan and Syunik respectively, which might partially alleviate tensions over TRIPP.

About that, this analysis here explains how that corridor threatens to undermine Russia’s broader regional position, which is relevant to Iran as well since its national interests would also be challenged by TRIPP turbocharging the expansion of US-backed Turkish influence all across its northern periphery. While senior Iranian officials lambasted TRIPP due to the US leasing control over it for 99 years, which Kostanyan told IRNA “does not mean a US security presence”, Iran ultimately chose to accept it.

The decision to cooperate with Azerbaijan to facilitate trade with Armenia and beyond represents a middle ground between confrontation and capitulation, but either extreme might still manifest if Kostanyan was only telling a half-truth and TRIPP’s security is outsourced to US PMCs like some fear. For now, and absent the permanent deployment of US troops or PMCs to Armenia, Iran is trying to make the best of a strategically difficult situation, perhaps hoping that this will appease the emerging Turkic Bloc.