Hasan Rouhani’s re-election provides additional opportunities: Expert
Vardan Voskanyan, Head of Iranian Studies of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, told reporters today that Hasan Rouhani’s re-election provides additional opportunities to our country.
According to the expert our expectations from Rouhani refer to several fields, where, in his words, Armenia and Iran have obviously recorded success,
“That success is on various levels. If the field of energy is the steam engine of Armenia-Iran relations, construction of the third high-voltage electric line is underway, then there are several fields, which lame, e.g. communications—roads. Rouhani personally stated that Iran observes Armenia as a crucial country in the project connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea, and we should implement at least the first component of communications as soon as possible—North-South road.”
The expert stated that during the conference on Silk Road in China it was stated that the Chinese more activate their efforts around that project, and according to him, in this context we shouldn’t miss the issue of Armenia-Iran railway from the agenda.
“Here an interesting development is observed as well: Rasht-Astara railway, that would connect Iranian railway to that off Azerbaijan, it isn’t constructed until now and the financial resources promised by Azerbaijan for its construction haven’t been provided. Moreover, the Azerbaijani bank, which promises to allot that amount, has gone bankrupt, i.e. the project to be implemented with the hostile country has been suspended, this is good. Additional opportunities are opened before us to pass on to implementation of that agenda.
The next crucial field, according to Voskanyan is development of trilateral-quadrilateral cooperation involving Georgia, Turkmenistan and in some cases—Russia, “You know our country and Iran negotiate around trilateral Armenia-Iran-Turkmenistan gas agreement, we again negotiate with Georgia and here some progress has been recorded. These formats allow increasing Armenia’s role in the whole region.”
The expert stated that on account of this all Hasan Rouhani is rather perceptible, predictable person, who already recorded some experience and success. Accordingly, he considers Armenia has additional opportunities to implement Armenia-Iran agenda with no delay.”
By Razmik Martirosyan
