Ex-envoy to Baku: Iran lost many opportunities in Caucasus

The remarks by Afshar Soleimani to ILNA news agency came amid Azerbaijan’s threats to shut off the Zangezur corridor along the Iranian-Armenian border that would obliterate the land border between Iran and Armenia.

Tehran has warned it cannot tolerate the “security threat emanating from growing Azerbaijan-Israel ties”.

Soleimani also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘divergent’ policies in the region that pushed some regional countries to align themselves with the West, referring to the recent plan by Armenia to distance itself from Russia by holding military drills with the United States.

The former envoy noted that the latest transit agreements, most notably in the G20 Summit which wrapped up in New Delhi on Sunday, have bypassed Iran and Russia “due to their foreign policy challenges for the West which bar them from taking advantage of their geopolitical and geo-economic positions.”

On the other side of the spectrum, Iran’s former ambassador to Armenia Seyyed Ali Saghaeian, in an interview with Jamaran news website, dismissed speculations that the tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan would lead to a new war.

Saghaeian was optimistic that Azerbaijan would not cross Iran’s red lines, explaining that the Islamic Republic has been playing a more active role to help defuse the tensions between its northern neighbors and preserve its national interests.