December 1, 2023
by Warren L. Nelson
The dispute has been simmering for years, since Azerbaijan demanded such a corridor across Armenia, to Iran’s anger. About a year ago, Iran said it had been settled with a plan for Azerbaijan to build a highway, railway and pipeline across Iranian territory, rather than Armenian. But Azerbaijan never acknowledged any such agreement, and the Islamic Republic once again confused its goals with its accomplishments.
Then, on October 10, Iranian news media quoted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as saying “an agreement has been reached” for the linking corridor to go through Iran.
Then, on October 25, Reuters quoted Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy aide to President Aliyev, as saying Baku had dropped its demand for a corridor across Armenia. “The project has lost its attractiveness for us. We can do this with Iran instead.” That suggested an agreement with Iran still needed to be negotiated. But the Islamic Republic has repeatedly endorsed the idea of a corridor in its territory, so it looks likely to go forward—assuming Iran does not make excessive demands of Baku.
When Russia negotiated a ceasefire ending the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia war, that agreement included a provision for a highway, railway and pipeline link between Azerbaijan and its exclave over Armenian territory. Iran objected vociferously to that, saying it would cut Iran off from Armenia.
But it was an inane argument. Such links have existed in many locales. Between the world wars, Germany had to go through Poland to reach Germany’s East Prussia exclave. The State of Washington runs school buses every day through Canada’s British Columbia to reach high school students who live in Point Roberts, which is not linked to Washington State by land. Russia can only get to its exclave of Kaliningrad through Poland or Lithuania. Throughout the Cold War, Britain, France and the US reached their zones in Berlin through road, rail and air passageways from West Germany across the Soviet occupied zone of Germany (which later became East Germany).
But Iran acted like Azerbaijan would have sovereignty over such corridors through Armenia, something Baku never requested.
Iran seems to see no problem with such corridors running on Iranian territory which suggests that Iran and its supersensitivity over sovereignty really doesn’t believe anything it has been saying about a corridor across Armenia cutting off Iran’s access to Armenia.
Some have suggested Iran wants the corridors on its land so it can threaten to shut them down in any dispute with Azerbaijan. But no one really knows what’s behind the Islamic Republic’s thinking.
President Raisi in October alleged that the proposed link across Armenian territory was just a plot to allow a NATO presence in the region and a threat to Iran’s national security. Few paid any attention to that laughable theory; even if NATO really wanted a presence in the region, the proposed corridor across Armenia would accomplish nothing toward that goal.
The issue theoretically dates back to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Actually, it dates back to the 1920s when Joseph Stalin drew the boundaries of the Caucasus states that Russia’s Bolsheviks had conquered. He drew Nakhichevan as an exclave of Azerbaijan because it had an overwhelming Azerbaijani majority. But when it came to Nagorno-Karabagh, a part of Azerbaijan with an overwhelming majority of Armenian ethnics, he did not make it an exclave of Armenia but left it inside Azerbaijan.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a three-year war over Nagorno-Karabakh that ended with Armenians taking full control over Nagorno-Karabakh plus all the land between that region and Armenia land populated mainly by Azerbaijanis.
The Azerbaijani military was feeble. But over the next three decades, Azerbaijan built it into a serious military force and re-opened the war in 2020. Within six weeks, it thoroughly defeated the Armenians and clawed back all its occupied territory, including much of Nagorno-Karabakh before the Russians imposed a ceasefire.
This past September, with the Russians distracted by their war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan finished its takeover of all of Nagorno-Karabakh in just 24 hours. Russian troops, in the area to maintain the 2020 ceasefire, did nothing at all. Almost all the Armenian ethnic population of Nagorno-Karabakh—about 120,000 people have since abandoned Nagorno-Karabakh and moved to Armenia proper. The self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh dissolved itself in October and said it would wrap up all its activities by December 31. It has ceased to claim any rights to Nagorno-Karabakh and effectively bowed to Azerbaijani military power.
Nothing has yet been said about who would build, own and operate the new railway, highway and pipeline links through Iran. So, there remain plenty of issues to possibly spike any agreement.
Hakki Uygur, president of the Center for Iranian Studies in Ankara, told IranWire that a corridor across Armenia would remove Iran from China’s Belt and Road initiative for linking China with Europe, weakening Iran’s logistical position and denying it the revenues to be earned from passage along the corridor. The corridor will link in Nakhichevan to rail and road lines that go into Turkiye and then onto Europe, so it is economically more than just a tie between Azerbaijan and its exclave.
One news report said the pipeline would be 85 kilometers (53 miles) long and have a capacity sufficient to meet all of Nakhichevan’s natural gas needs which would mean Nakhichevan would cease buying Iranian natural gas. That would lower Iran’s gas revenues. The plan requires that a new rail line be built. An old Soviet rail line already crosses Armenia between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan just north of the Iranian border. It was severed by Armenia when Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that makes the corridor across Iran much more expensive than one across Armenia, where the rail line would just have to be repaired. The rail system in Azerbaijan is the old Soviet broad-gauge system, where the tracks are farther apart than in Iran (and most of the rest of the world). So, the rail line would not benefit Iran.