The contacts followed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s news conference on Wednesday during which he signaled readiness to let a U.S. company run a transport corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave passing through Syunik, an Armenian region bordering Iran.
In a short statement, the Armenian government’s press office said Grigorian discussed with Ambassador Mehdi Sobhani “recent regional developments.”
“Thoughts were exchanged on prospects for unblocking communication routes in the region,” it said without elaborating.
The office of Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, released on Thursday a similar readout of his phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Ahmadian.
Iran is strongly opposed to the extraterritorial corridor for Nakhichevan sought by Azerbaijan as well as Turkey. The Armenian government has likewise rejected until now Baku’s demands for the movement of people and cargo through that corridor to be exempt from Armenian border controls.
Pashinian’s apparent readiness to accept the unconventional transit arrangement proposed by the United States recently has been construed by Armenian opposition leaders and some analysts as a major change in Yerevan’s position. They say that outsourcing management of the transport corridor to an American company would undermine Armenian sovereignty over Syunik.
Sobhani did not sound concerned about Pashinian’s statements when he spoke to journalists later on Friday.
“What we have seen is statements [by Armenian leaders] that there are proposals,” he said. “Don’t ask me for an official position on what you think might happen.”
“What we know and what Armenian officials have said is that everything will be under the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Armenia,” added the diplomat.
In a clear reference to the U.S. and other Western powers, Iranian leaders have repeatedly spoken out against the presence of “extra-regional” forces in the South Caucasus.