Iran’s Defence Minister Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh has visited Yerevan nearly a month after the first-ever joint military drills held along the two countries’ border.
Meeting with his Armenian counterpart Suren Papikian on Tuesday, Nasirzadeh voiced support for Armenia’s territorial integrity and the independence of the countries of the region. He expressed his opposition to any change in the internationally recognized borders. Iranian Mehr news agency quoted Nasirzadeh as saying that “Iran and Armenia have a strong will to improve relations.”
The Armenian Defense Ministry revealed the two men discussed bilateral relations and regional security, without providing further details. “The ministers highly appraised the level of cooperation between the two countries in the field of defense,” the ministry said in a short statement.
Papikian visited Armenia in March last year where he and Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani reached “a number of understandings on issues of mutual interest.”
The Iranian Defence Minister’s visit comes a month after the Armenian army and Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) held the first-ever joint drills along the Armenian-Iranian border last month.
