{"id":1218,"date":"2008-07-28T03:39:01","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T00:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2014-01-01T19:58:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T17:58:17","slug":"isolated-armenia-leans-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/07\/28\/isolated-armenia-leans-on-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Isolated Armenia leans on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robin Forestier, BBC News, Yerevan<\/span><\/p>\n

Deep in the cellar of the Noy Brandy factory in Yerevan, Armenia, there is a pungent, but not unpleasant<\/p>\n

Noy Brandy's wine-tasting sessions are popular with Iranian tourists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

smell of ageing, fortified wine.<\/p>\n

On an upturned wooden cask sit a dozen glasses, and a bottle of 1944 sherry. The company’s wine-tasting sessions are popular with tourists and most of them, according to tour guide Anna, come from Iran.<\/p>\n

“Ten metres underground, they think Allah is out of range,” she smiles. “They don’t want to taste the wine, they want to drink it.”<\/p>\n

Across town, Omid Mojahed is one such Iranian looking for more than just a taste of Armenia. He is a 28-year-old student and an entrepreneur at heart.<\/p>\n

He spends most of his time away from his books, working on his businesses, which include a travel agency working exclusively in the Iranian market.<\/p>\n

“In summer I think that 90% of tourists are Iranian<\/strong>. Armenia is so close by and has attractive things – cafes and nightclubs, and beautiful Lake Sevan.”<\/p>\n

Omid has also just opened a Persian restaurant, catering for locals as well as Iranian expats, keen for some home cuisine.<\/p>\n

Gathered at the bar around a smoking pipe, a group of Iranian students are relaxing after their exams.<\/p>\n

Twenty-year-old Mehdez explains that Armenia is popular with thousands of young people who cannot get a place in Iran’s over-subscribed higher education system.<\/p>\n

“I chose to study in Yerevan because it’s an easier situation. Here we have more freedom,” she says.<\/p>\n

“But of course anything that we do here, we can do in Iran – just not in public.”<\/p>\n

Geographic isolation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of that freedom includes an increasingly liberalised economy, and that makes Armenia attractive to foreign investment.<\/p>\n

The Armenian capital is hardly an international economic powerhouse, but there are signs that Iranian investors sense an opportunity.<\/p>\n

On one street, many of the stores are Iranian-run. One of them is owned by Muhammad Rahimi.<\/p>\n

Muhammad Rahimi benefits from Armenia's dependence on Iran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He started trading household goods 10 years ago. Business, he says, gets better and better. Practically every item he sells – from pots and pans to air-fresheners – has been imported from Iran.<\/p>\n

Like many of his compatriots, Muhammad benefits from Armenia’s geographical isolation.<\/p>\n

War with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s led to the closure of its borders with Azerbaijan and an unsympathetic Turkey.<\/p>\n

That leaves landlocked Armenia looking towards Georgia to the north, and Iran to the south.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Georgia, economically, is worse than Armenia,” <\/strong>says Alexander Iskandarian, director of the Caucasus Media Institute.<\/p>\n

“But Iran has a population of 70 million and it has oil and gas. It’s rich by regional standards, so you should have normal relations with them. It’s dangerous not to do so.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet trade turnover between the two countries remains modest, at just $200m (\u00a3100m) a year, according to the economic department at the Iranian embassy.<\/p>\n

US disapproval<\/strong><\/p>\n

That has not stopped the United States from expressing concern about Armenia’s ties with its neighbour. Those ties include the new Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, frequent bilateral talks and state visits, not to mention a sizeable Armenian minority in northern Iran.<\/p>\n

In this year’s Country Reports on Terrorism, the US state department said warming relations between the two countries made Armenia “reluctant to criticise publicly objectionable Iranian conduct”.<\/p>\n

The little country courts the Americans, Europeans and Russians. It is a difficult balancing act to follow.<\/p>\n

But Armenia’s unique relationship with the regional power – Iran – is one it cannot afford to abandon.<\/p>\n

Iranian students say they enjoy more freedom in Armenia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moreover, the two countries are united by a shared sense of isolation from the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

“Let’s not forget that Armenia is in a virtual blockade. We attach great importance to our relations with Iran. One can choose one’s friends but not one’s neighbours,” says Armen Movsisyan, Armenia’s minister of energy.<\/p>\n

For those Iranians who have chosen to make a home in Armenia, geopolitics may not be foremost in their minds, but they are equally as pragmatic as the politicians.<\/p>\n

“I’m no expert in international relations. All I know is we always had good relations with Armenia and that’s why I like working here,” says the trader Muhammad Rahimi.<\/p>\n

Back in his restaurant, Omid Mojahed has no plans to leave while the going is good.<\/p>\n

“Everything will be okay for me here, that’s why I prefer to stay,” he says.<\/p>\n

“I like Armenian people, and it’s difficult for me to want to leave my friends. When you come to Yerevan for a month, you will stay in Yerevan forever!”<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/span>, 24 July 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Forestier, BBC News, Yerevan Deep in the cellar of the Noy Brandy factory in Yerevan, Armenia, there is a pungent, but not unpleasant smell of ageing, fortified wine. On an upturned wooden cask sit a dozen glasses, and a bottle of 1944 sherry. The company’s wine-tasting sessions are popular with tourists and most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":60691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-iran_"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}