Armenia’s ambassador to Iran, Grigor Hakobian, met with Iranian Vice President Hamid Pourmohammadi at the weekend to discuss what his office described as “obstacles” to cargo shipments between the two neighboring countries.
In a short statement, the Armenian Embassy in Tehran said Hakobian and Pourmohammadi looked into the “current state of bilateral freight transport, existing obstacles and ways to resolve them.” It gave no details.
The meeting took place about two weeks after a visit to Tehran by the head of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee, Eduard Hakobian. The latter signed with chief of the Iranian customs service, Foroud Asgari, a memorandum on simplifying and speeding up customs checks on the Armenian-Iranian border.
According to Armenian government data, Armenian-Iranian trade rose by 6 percent, to about $438 million, in the first seven months of this year, despite Iran’s continuing conflict with the United States. Iran is also one of Armenia’s two commercial conduits to the outside world. It accounted for roughly 30 percent of cargo shipments to and from the landlocked South Caucasus country before the war.
The U.S. military strikes and naval blockade have disrupted the operations of Iran’s Persian Gulf ports. The Islamic Republic is reportedly looking for alternative routes to export and import goods because of that.
The Al Jazeera TV network on Sunday quoted an Iranian analyst, Vali Kaleji, as saying this is putting put huge strains on Iran’s border crossings with its neighbors, including Armenia. In his words, commercial trucks need days to cross the Armenian-Iranian border.
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