Friday, March 22 2019 17:27

ArmInfo. Before Armenian diplomacytoday is quite a difficult task to buildeffective dialogue with Tehran and Tbilisi. And this, taking into account the interests  of the Russian owner of the energy system of Armenia and not  provoking irritation of the United States.

A similar opinion was expressed by ArmInfo by Andrei Areshev, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Ural-Volga Region  of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of  Sciences.Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is visiting  Iran on February 27-28, met with the highest political and spiritual  leadership of the country. The President of the Islamic Republic of  Iran, Hassan Rouhani, expressed his readiness to increase gas  supplies to Armenia in order to expand the electricity for gas barter  between Armenia and Iran. 

He also expressed readiness to discuss trilateral cooperation for the  export of gas to Georgia, transit through Armenia. In terms of  cooperation in the field of energy, the parties considered the  possibilities of the energy corridor Iran-Armenia-Georgia-Russia, the  transport and logistics from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea."At a  press conference on March 19, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan  actually confirmed the intention to increase gas supplies from Iran.  He also said that, despite its multilateral vector of foreign policy,  Yerevan is discussing everything with partners, trying to make the  Armenian agenda transparent for them. And taking into account that  the priority for Armenia remains multi-level ties with Russia, with  its closest neighbors, which is especially important for a  semi-blocked country, we can fully agree with that, "the expert  emphasized.According to Areshev, there is a serious problem in the  development of Armenian-Iranian relations - the general line of the  United States to maximize political and economic isolation of Iran  and cut off Iranian energy resources from European markets. And  taking into account the partnership of the United States with  Georgia, to the sacrifice of which any attempts of Georgian-Iranian  rapprochement were regularly made, the United States is unlikely to  stop at anything in the case of projects with the participation of  Armenia.

Noting that so far Armenia's imports of Iranian gas are not subject  to US sanctions, the expert noted the need to take into account the  possibility of a tough US opposition to any multilateral energy  projects involving Iran in the current economic policy. According to  his forecasts, such pressure can manifest itself not only in economic  issues, up to the situation around the settlement of the Karabakh  conflict.At the same time, according to the expert, it should be  recognized that new accents in relations with Russia after the  "velvet revolution" in Armenia, including a frank discussion of the  existing problems, are quite capable of giving additional impetus to  energy cooperation in the region."Thus, in the past 10 years, the  Armenian- Iranian gas pipeline has been used for a third of its  capacity. However, now Iran is talking about the fact that after  modernization the gas pipeline will be able to pump all the volume  needed by Armenia. The most likely are swap gas supplies from Iran to  Armenia. And Russian gas, previously supplied to Armenia, will remain  in Georgia. Thus, more efficient use of the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline  will in turn make it possible to increase the volume of energy barter  between the two countries by the gas-for-electricity scheme, Areshev  concluded.