Azerbaijan and Iran officially agreed on the opening of a new transit corridor passing through Iran and connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave.
On March 11, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met Iran’s Urban Development and Roads Minister Rostam Ghosemi in Baku. The two signed a memorandum that establishes the corridor between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave.
According to the memorandum, the corridor will include a new railway, a new motorway, alongside communication and energy lines. The corridor will pass within five kilometers of Iranian-Armenian border.
The news comes after more than a year of campaigning by the Azerbaijani government with the aim of opening what it calls the Zangazur corridor, which would pass through southern Armenia connecting Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan. The government claims that the opening of such a corridor is one of the points of the 9 November ceasefire agreement that ended Armenia-Azerbaijan war in 2020, and President Aliyev once said that Azerbaijan would open that corridor with the use of force should Armenia refuse.
