Tehran – Amid rapid developments around Iranian interests spanning from the Levant through Mesopotamia to the Gulf waters, the signing of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia under the auspices of US President Donald Trump at the White House marks a new phase in Tehran’s approach to the Zangazur corridor issue, which it has long opposed on its borders.

At a very critical time when security and political calculations intersect in the South Caucasus, Iran’s response ranges from apparent welcome of peace to geo-strategic reservations about shifting power balances.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement reflecting a geopolitical paradox; it welcomed the initiative as an “important step towards sustainable peace,” but simultaneously expressed “concern about the negative effects of any external intervention near its shared borders,” considering Trump’s path – without naming him – as “threatening regional stability” if it leads to cutting the direct land connection between Tehran and Europe via Armenia.

Following a series of military maneuvers conducted by Iranian armed forces in the northwest for training aimed at thwarting any geopolitical changes on its shared borders, Tehran views this as a threat to its national security and a prelude to dragging external parties into the region. The Foreign Ministry’s statement raised questions about how it will deal with establishing a corridor challenging one of its key spheres of influence in the Caucasus.

Despite the diplomatic tone of the statement, political circles in Tehran cannot ignore the implications of Western and regional media discussions about “Trump’s road linking Baku with the Azerbaijani Nakhchivan region, with American investment and management,” which some Iranians see as a challenge that could open the door to geopolitical changes threatening Persian interests.

Iranian observers believe that US involvement in mediating between Baku and Yerevan and managing the economic projects accompanying the agreement is not limited to Trump’s road but will raise the American flag within sight, making Iran adjacent to a superpower for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Moreover, the American presence may facilitate the presence of European and NATO parties near Iranian borders.

Political writer Saber Kal Anbari interprets Trump’s road as part of attempts to strangle Iran, pushing it towards a major geopolitical transformation, with potentially more severe consequences for Tehran than expanding the Abraham Accords south of the Gulf waters.

In an analysis published on his Telegram account, Anbari sees the core of the agreement between Baku and Yerevan as creating a 43-kilometer corridor along the Iranian-Armenian border, granting the United States the right to develop and control it for 99 years.

He considered Washington’s involvement in controlling the corridor linking Baku and Nakhchivan a “purposeful and smart step by Azerbaijan and Turkey, aiming to overcome obstacles and circumvent opposition – especially Iranian – since any future practical opposition will not be directed against Azerbaijan or Ankara but directly against America, making confronting this huge security and geopolitical challenge extremely difficult and risky.”

Against the backdrop of Western and Eastern powers competing to control global corridor networks, some Iranians view Trump’s corridor within the context of the corridor wars extending from India and China to the Gulf waters, then the Caucasus and Central Asia, aiming to marginalize Tehran, Beijing, and Russia from these international routes.

Iranian researcher Mustafa Najafi, specializing in regional conflicts, sounds the alarm over the peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia because, according to him, it grants Washington exceptional control and exclusive development rights that undermine Armenian oversight.

In an analysis published on the “Iran Horizon” account on X platform, Najafi believes the new corridor will become a cross-border passage exempt from Armenian customs and security control, similar to historical models like the Berlin War corridor linking West Berlin to West Germany during the Cold War, and the current Suwałki corridor in Poland linking Lithuania to NATO.

In his view, the new corridor will provide continuous material connectivity from Turkey to Central Asia without passing through Iranian territory and will create, with American support, a strategic corridor deep in the South Caucasus to reduce Moscow’s influence and place Tehran in a more difficult position, completing the geopolitical pressure ring north of Iran.

Najafi concludes that developments in the Caucasus coincide with parallel projects in the Middle East, where America and its allies – from Gulf waters and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia and Europe – are redesigning energy and transport routes to bypass Iran and exclude it from the region’s geo-energy map.

Conversely, a third group of Tehran observers believes the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s statement shows its welcome of the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides signing a peace agreement ending decades of tension and conflict near its borders, albeit with a cautionary tone about foreign interventions arising from internal and external considerations to respect its allies’ interests in the Caucasus and avoid conservative criticism.

Former Iranian ambassador to Norway, Sri Lanka, and Hungary, Abdolreza Faraji Rad, believes that what happened at the US-Armenian-Azerbaijani trilateral summit was the signing of a memorandum of understanding – not a binding agreement – aiming to create an achievement for Trump after his failures in Ukraine, Gaza, the Iranian nuclear file, and the India-Pakistan conflict.

In an analysis published on the “Khabarstan” channel on Telegram, Faraji Rad says Trump’s road is indeed subject to Armenian sovereignty and believes the Armenian lobby in America succeeded in proposing this plan to ease Turkish and Azerbaijani pressures on Yerevan.

He opines that the biggest loser from signing the peace agreement in the Caucasus was Baku, which insisted that the corridor be under its sovereignty and that its citizens be able to travel through it without Armenian control, while the agreement guarantees Armenia’s sovereignty over the corridor, marking a gain for it and a winning card for Iran.