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.