Euronews: Despite Armenia’s recent shift toward closer ties with the West, it maintains warm relations with Tehran

Euronews covered the Armenian-Iranian military drills that took place last week. As noted, the two-day joint military drills involved elite forces and heavy weaponry, as well as sniper units.

The exercises were conducted last week on Iranian and Armenian territory along their 44-kilometre shared border, involving both light and heavy weaponry.

For the drills, Tehran had sent in Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elite forces, based in Tabriz, overseen by General Valiollah Madani, Deputy Commander of the IRGC Ground Forces.

Iranian officials said the exercise was conducted “to consolidate the security of the borders based on the shared interests of the two countries.” Armenia’s Ministry of Defense did not disclose the number of military personnel involved.

“The joint military exercises come amid ongoing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and the longstanding conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The regime in Tehran has found itself mired in multiple conflicts, sponsoring and backing the likes of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. At the same time, it has been accused of providing Shahed drones to Moscow amid its ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year,” Euronews writes.

As noted, despite Armenia’s recent shift toward closer ties with the West, it maintains warm relations with Tehran. Meanwhile, the South Caucasus country’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey have been closed for over three decades.

The newspaper notes that last month, both Armenia and Azerbaijan announced that progress has been made on the text of a peace treaty to end their nearly four-decades-long conflict over the region of Karabakh.