Continents and concerns converge

A sweeping view of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. - The New York Times

RUSSIA’s domestic intelligence agency patrols the meandering river, alongside cameras, watchtowers and three rows of barbed-wire fencing.

But Russia itself is almost 350km away. And by January, the Russian officers will start leaving.

This is the border between Iran and Armenia, a 50km strip that is a pivot point of a head-spinning geopolitical shift.

Here in the Caucasus, the mountainous region where Europe meets Asia, Russia and Iran are increasingly seen as rivals, while Western countries are – surprisingly – finding some common cause with Iran.

This complex, multi-country knot of interests and influences challenges Western conventional wisdom about alliances and could be upended yet again by the reelection of Donald Trump in the United States.

In a rare interview, Iran’s ambassador in Armenia, Mehdi Sobhani, acknowledged the diverging interests of Russia and Iran in the region, rather than the “strategic partnership” they often profess, banding together against the US.

“We are not allies,” Sobhani said.

“We have some differences, and we have some mutual interests. It doesn’t mean that we are allied.”

Armenia, a majority-Christian democracy, is at the centre of the Russia-Iran rivalry. It is also unsettled by the prospect of renewed war with its archenemy, Azerbaijan, which took a major step on the world stage recently by hosting global leaders for the annual United Nations climate conference known as COP.

In the last year, Armenia has looked to Iran, its southern neighbour, as the main guarantor of its sovereignty, while Azerbaijan, a majority-Muslim, secular autocracy, has been deepening military ties with Iran’s nemesis, Israel.

Russia is racing to contain Iran’s expanding influence in Armenia, a former Soviet republic at a crossroads of trade routes that Moscow needs to replace Western imports.

Complicating matters, some Western countries currently in conflict with Iran see their interests in the Caucasus – preventing war and reducing Russian influence – aligned with those of Iran.

Markus Ritter, who heads a European Union mission monitoring Armenia’s borders, said the Iranians “are here in the region, the best friends of the Armenians”.

While Russia and Azerbaijan bristle at the European presence, he said, Iran seems to accept it.

“It’s very complicated here,” he notes.

In the coming Trump presidency, Armenians fear, a harsher US policy towards Iran could ricochet against their country and embolden Azerbaijan. If the current conflict between Iran and Israel, fuelled by the fighting in the Gaza Strip, escalates into a full-scale war, they also worry that Iran would be less able to protect Armenia.

Until recently, many Armenians saw Russia as their guarantor.

Russia was a haven during the Armenian genocide a century ago. After the Soviet Union’s fall, Russia kept a military base in Armenia and guards at its borders.

In 2020, when Azerbaijan waged a 44-day war against Armenia to retake the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the mediation of President Vladimir Putin and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers brought the fighting to an end.

But then Russia invaded Ukraine, leaving it distracted and weakened in the Caucasus. When Azerbaijan last year again attacked Nagorno-Karabakh – a breakaway Armenian enclave within Azerbaijani territory – Russian forces stood by and later departed.

The latest round of tensions over the region’s future revolves around a thin strip of Armenian land, Syunik province, snaking south to the border with Iran.

The road from Yerevan, the capital, passes berms, machine gun nests and Armenian flags on hilltops. It is bounded on both sides by Azerbaijani territory.

Clogging the winding road is a stream of Iranian trucks.

For the moment, the road is a key route north from the Persian Gulf and critical for exporting Iranian goods to Russia and to Europe.

But it is also where Russia and Azerbaijan want to establish an east-west route towards Turkey that would be outside Armenia’s control – a route that Armenians fear Azerbaijan could take by force.

“It’s quite the peculiar situation,” said Alen Shadunts, an Iran specialist at the American University of Armenia.

“Iran, on the one hand, is moving towards a strategic partnership with Russia in other areas, but in the South Caucasus, there is an evident disalignment of interests and positions.”

Armenia rejects the idea of any road or rail corridor on its territory that it does not control.

Iran is also opposed, fearing the blocking of its northern border.

When Russia’s foreign minister called on Armenia to accept the corridor in August, Iran summoned Russia’s ambassador in protest – a rare display of discord between Russia and Iran.

“We cannot accept the change of the international border,” said Sobhani, the Iranian ambassador.

Iran and Russia also appear out of sync in the Middle East, where Putin has tried to position Russia as a mediator between Israel and Iran, rather than throwing his support behind Iran.

Still, officials in Moscow insist that the two countries remain united in opposing what both see as Western hegemony.

“Russia and Iran are allies in the broad sense of the word,” said Konstantin Zatulin, a Russian lawmaker, “which does not at all exclude some differences in the details”.

On Armenia’s southern border, however, the competition between Russia and Iran is playing out in real time. Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, still patrols the frontier.

Azerbaijan says it wants peace. It has also sought to contain tensions with Iran, which flared after an attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Teheran, Iran, last year.

President Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s leader, said recently, “We have achieved what we wanted,” adding, “Islamophobes and Azerbaijanophobes in certain Western capitals are inciting Armenia to start a new war.”

The Biden administration has pushed Azerbaijan and Armenia to hold peace talks.

Some current and former Armenian officials said there had been progress recently but that Trump was a wild card.

They fear a combination of less American attention and a harder line on Iran, which they see as playing a constructive role in the Caucasus.

Areg Kochinyan, an Armenian former security official who runs a think tank in Yerevan, said, “The bad guys in other regions may all of a sudden not be that bad in this region.”

He added that the waning of US attention and pressure on Iran “creates a possibility that there will be a vacuum of stabilising force in the region.”

European countries have their own balancing act. EU leaders have been deepening ties with Azerbaijan, despite human rights concerns, because the oil- and gas-rich country provides alternatives to Russian energy.

They also recognise the country’s importance to Israel, which gets much of its oil from Azerbaijan, sells weapons to Azerbaijan and sees strategic value in having close ties with a neighbour of Iran.

Ritter, the EU mission chief, said Armenia and Azerbaijan were building bunkers, trenches and artillery positions “to prepare for the worst case”. — ©2024 The New York Times Company