YEREVAN—Armenia’s Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian on Tuesday met with Iran’s Deputy Defense Minister and Armed Forces Logistics, Reza Mosaffari Niya to discuss expanding cooperation in the defense and military.
The defense ministry issued a short statement and would not elaborate on the details of the discussions.
In the last months, Iran and Armenia have been strengthening relation in a number of areas, including an announcement last week in Tehran that Iran would construct a railway that would give Armenia opportunity to have access to international waterways. The plan envisions bolstering the railway link to allow Armenia access to Iran’s southern port of Bandar Abbas and to Georgia in the north.
A call from Ohanian to strengthen Iran-Armenia defense ties was echoed last year when he visited Tehran and met with Iranian officials, including Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi.
“Establishing a secure environment is possible only through the development and reinvigoration of all-out ties among regional countries, especially through direct defensive and security relations,” Vahidi said at the time as reported by the IRNA news agency.
At the time, Ohanian highlighted the significance of bilateral cooperation for promoting regional security, saying that the crises in the region can only be solved through constructive bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and stressed Armenia’s resolve to increase mutual cooperation with Iran.
Our relation with our closest neighbours is much more important than relations with super powers. Our history shows that all super powers have used Armenia and the Armenians for their own purposes without giving back anything. We should develop our relations with Iran for many reasons but the most important reason is that teher exist a mutual respect since many centuries back. Russia is also a close neighbour but they betrayed us some years before the Genocide. Even though Russia is our friend and ally today they are getting much more back from this relation than Armenia gets … again.
We should learn from our history. We are allone and must stop rely on others. The sooner the better…