ArmInfo. Iran is not a country that can be stopped by a threat, and Armenia should use this to protect the south of the country. Second President of Armenia Robert Kocharian expressed a similar opinion at a press conference on September 28.
The second president of Armenia stated that today the Syunik region of Armenia is in the most vulnerable position, which both Turkey and Azerbaijan have their eyes on, and the only country that is also not interested in transformation of the region is Iran. Kocharyan drew attention to the fact that the only country that, out of its own interests, is ready to go beyond statements in case of a threat to Syunik is Iran. According to him, however, nothing has been done in this direction by the Armenian side in these two years.
"We should have at least held a couple of exercises with Iran, namely in Syunik. A certain legal basis should have been created with Iran during this period. This will be the strongest deterrent for Azerbaijan, because Iran is not a state that can be threatened if it pursues its national interests," the second president said.
At the same time, he stressed that he knows that there were such conversations with Iran in May 2021, but then, the Armenian side froze everything and there was no continuation. "By the way, the initiative was not ours. But, and now it is not too late. I believe that here we must take some important steps. We need to persuade Russia. Yes, I'm not talking about the benefits from the CSTO - that would be another stupid "There are agreements within the organization that are important for the acquisition of weapons. We need, I think, to supplement our security with new components. This needs to be explained to the Russian side. Some kind of trilateral format can be created, since interests coincide, and there are quite warm relations between Russia and Iran today," he added. Kocharyan.
In his opinion, this can be explained to the USA as well, of course, they will not like it. "But, they offer an alternative? They don't! The situation is like this, and I believe that we need to be more courageous, including in relations with the outside world," Kocharyan summed up.