Iran adviser warns Armenia over Trump route, calls it a red line
Velayati said Iran would not tolerate crossing the line and that he had warned Armenia's ambassador directly.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, warned Armenia on Thursday that Tehran still considers the Trump Route a red line, Russia's state news agency TASS reported.
In a piece he contributed to the Iranian newspaper Ettelaat, Velayati said Tehran regards the corridor as a line that must not be crossed.
He also criticized the Armenian parliament's move last week to approve construction of the corridor.
Velayati wrote that he had told the Armenian ambassador directly that if US President Donald Trump and his allies tried to cross the line, "we will break their legs."
He said that during meetings in Tehran with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said directly that Iran is against the Zangezur corridor.
Velayati said the late leader's strategic guidelines for foreign policy and national interests are a red line for the Islamic Republic.
On Aug. 8, 2025, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a declaration after meeting Trump in Washington, setting out a peaceful settlement and a transport corridor between the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan.
The project was named Trump's Route for International Peace and Prosperity.
On Oct. 28, the Armenian parliament ratified a framework agreement on strategic partnership with the United States covering the project.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk told TASS in an interview on April 2 that the Trump Route agreement had disrupted the regional balance in the South Caucasus.
