Tehran Opposed to Any Geopolitical Change in Region

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Tehran supports the territorial integrity and historical borders of regional countries and firmly opposes any geopolitical change in the region.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran opposes any geopolitical change or the presence of Western military forces in the Caucasus because the presence of foreigners will not only fail to solve any problem, but will also cause new problems,” Raisi said in a Monday phone call with Armenian Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, according to his website.
“In line with the neighborhood policy and improvement of relations, the Islamic Republic of Iran attaches great significance and gives priority to increasing interactions and cooperation with the South Caucasus region,” he stressed.
The Iranian president emphasized that Armenia and Azerbaijan should recognize each other’s territorial integrity as an important step toward the establishment of peace.
The common border between the two countries should transcend beyond being just a security issue, and must rather be used to boost economic ties, he said.
The Armenian prime minister briefed the Iranian president on the latest developments regarding his country’s peace talks with Azerbaijan in which they would agree on borders, settle differences over the enclave, and unfreeze relations.
His remarks came against a backdrop of decades of tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on the border between the two countries.
Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but has a primarily Armenian population that has resisted Azerbaijani rule since a separatist war there ended in 1994.
In 2020, the second Karabakh war broke out, killing more than 6,500 people on both sides during a six-week conflict. The war ended with a Russian-brokered deal that saw Yerevan cede swathes of the Azerbaijani territory that it had been holding for several decades.

Normal Path 

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman also said on Monday that Iran will continue the diplomatic efforts to return the Iran-Azerbaijan relations to a “normal and correct” path.
Nasser Kanaani made the remarks at a weekly press conference in the Iranian capital Tehran, commenting on a phone conversation between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov on Sunday evening, according to a statement released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
“Good” steps have been taken so far toward the resolution of certain outstanding issues between the two countries, Kanaani was quoted as saying in the statement.
In the phone call, the Iranian foreign minister said Iran and Azerbaijan can resolve the problems in bilateral relations without third parties’ interference.
Bayramov praised the Iranian foreign minister’s “constructive efforts” toward resolving the existing tensions, describing his conversation with Amir-Abdollahian as “positive”.
The Azerbaijani foreign minister also hoped that bilateral ties would further expand following the resolution of a number of outstanding issues.
Iran-Azerbaijan relations have soured over the past years due to the latter’s growing ties with Israel as well as a number of other incidents.
Among the factors leading to the deterioration of the two countries’ relations was a deadly armed attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in January, which was described as an “act of terror” by Baku, although Tehran said investigations revealed that the assailant had “personal and family-related” motivations.
Also in May, Iran expelled four Azerbaijani diplomats after declaring them “persona non grata” in a retaliatory response to the expulsion of four of its diplomats in Azerbaijan in April.