Author: Seyed Amirbahador Hashemi, Head of the Caucasus Studies Group at IRAS (The Institute for Iran-Eurasia Studies)
(IRAS Exclusive Analysis)
Introduction
Is Armenia distancing itself from Russia in favor of a definitive turn toward the West? Recent developments—ranging from Yerevan’s de facto freezing of its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to its expanding defense partnerships with France, India, the United States, and the European Union—might initially suggest such a realignment. Yet an examination of Armenia’s post-independence trajectory indicates that current shifts cannot be reduced to a binary substitution of Russia with the West. Rather, what is unfolding is a structural redefinition of the paradigm Yerevan has pursued across three decades to navigate acute geopolitical constraints, institutionalized security dependencies, and the imperative to safeguard sovereign agency.
The independence of the Republic of Armenia in 1991, amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union, positioned the fledgling state within a geopolitical environment where historical rivalries, security vulnerabilities, economic isolation, and geographical realities severely circumscribed foreign policy choices. A landlocked nation, Armenia faced closed or militarized borders along its western frontier with Turkey and its eastern frontier with the Republic of Azerbaijan due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Ankara’s strategic coordination with Baku. Consequently, territorial security and external transit connectivity immediately became the primary pillars of the country’s foreign policy (Libaridian, 1999; Astourian, 2000).
Viewed from this perspective, Armenian external relations cannot be understood merely as an ideological choice between Moscow and Western capitals. The core dilemma confronting Yerevan has long centered on how a small, landlocked state, surrounded by regional rivals and major powers, can guarantee its physical defense while preserving as much decision-making autonomy and diplomatic flexibility as possible.
One of the earliest structural frameworks designed to manage this dilemma was the doctrine of “Complementarism.” Conceptualized under then-Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, this approach was predicated on the simultaneous, non-adversarial development of ties with Russia, the United States, the European Union, and Iran (Oskanian, 2001). Within this architecture, engagement with one external actor was not treated as a zero-sum replacement for another; instead, Yerevan sought to draw upon the distinct capacities of various partners to bolster national defense, advance economic development, and widen diplomatic room for maneuver.
Complementarism was the direct product of Armenia’s structural vulnerabilities. The state required Moscow’s military umbrella for baseline defense, yet deliberately cultivated ties with the West and Iran to prevent total dependence on the Kremlin. This dynamic produced a dual track in Armenian external policy from the first decade of independence onward: profound military and security reliance on Russia, balanced by consistent efforts to diversify political dialogue and commercial exchanges (Minasyan, 2012).
Relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran followed this same strategic rationale. Given the blockade imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan, Iran functioned as one of Armenia’s few operational lifelines to the international system. For Tehran, Armenia represented a critical overland corridor into the South Caucasus and onward to the Black Sea basin. Engagement with Iran was therefore never a routine bilateral trade relationship; it constituted an essential element of Yerevan’s geopolitical diversification.
This article argues that the aftermath of the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and particularly the 2023 crisis, severely disrupted traditional complementarism, nudging Armenian foreign policy toward a posture of “strategic hedging.” This transition does not signify an abrupt geopolitical break with Russia in favor of total Western integration. Rather, it reflects Yerevan’s recalibration to mitigate structural security vulnerabilities, expand alternative partnerships, and navigate systemic uncertainty across the South Caucasus.
From Security Alliance with Russia to the Crisis of the Traditional Model
Throughout the 1990s, the First Nagorno-Karabakh War served as the primary determinant of Armenia’s foreign and security architecture. Originating in the late Soviet period, the dispute escalated into inter-state warfare following the Soviet collapse, continuing until the 1994 ceasefire. Under these conditions, the Russian Federation established itself as Armenia’s indispensable defense partner. Armenia joined the Collective Security Treaty in 1992—which institutionalized into the CSTO in 2002—and signed the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with Moscow, establishing a formal legal framework for their bilateral strategic partnership.
The presence of the Russian 102nd Military Base in Gyumri, alongside the operational deployment of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) border guards along Armenia’s frontiers with Turkey and Iran, firmly anchored Moscow at the center of Armenia’s defense architecture. Beyond military deployments, Russian capital acquired substantial, often controlling stakes in Armenia’s energy grid, rail transport, telecommunications, and heavy industrial assets. Armenia’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015 reinforced these economic and regulatory links. As a result, Armenia’s reliance on Russia extended far beyond a standard military alliance, coalescing into a complex web of economic, infrastructural, institutional, and human interdependencies.
Yet this asymmetric dependence did not fully displace complementarism. Yerevan continued to expand institutional ties with the European Union, sustain diplomatic engagement with Washington, and preserve close bilateral coordination with Tehran. The defining characteristic of this period was the coexistence of two divergent tracks: profound military reliance on Moscow coupled with deliberate efforts to maintain and broaden external alternatives.
The 2018 Velvet Revolution marked an inflection point for this dynamic. While Nikol Pashinyan’s assumption of power restructured Armenia’s domestic governance, it did not initially trigger a foreign policy realignment. The incoming administration affirmed the enduring significance of relations with Moscow and avoided challenging Armenia’s standing within Eurasian integration frameworks (Pashinyan, 2018). Nonetheless, latent political frictions between Yerevan and Moscow, compounded by the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, set the stage for an incremental re-evaluation of Armenia’s national security framework.
2020 and 2023: Turning Points in Yerevan’s Perception of Russia
The 44-day war in the autumn of 2020 constituted a structural turning point in Armenian-Russian relations. Moscow refrained from intervening militarily on Armenia’s behalf, maintaining that combat operations were confined to territories outside Armenia’s internationally recognized borders (CSTO Secretariat, 2020; International Crisis Group, 2020).
On November 9, 2020, a trilateral statement signed by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia halted active combat operations, mandating the deployment of Russian peacekeeping forces along the line of contact and the Lachin Corridor (President of Russia, 2020). The 2020 war introduced a core contradiction into the bilateral relationship: Moscow remained the central arbiter in halting hostilities and managing the postwar status quo, yet its military non-intervention prompted acute concerns in Yerevan regarding Russia’s reliability as a definitive security guarantor.
Subsequent developments compounded these doubts. Beginning in December 2022, the blockade of the Lachin Corridor precipitated an acute humanitarian crisis in the region, culminating in September 2023 when Azerbaijan launched a targeted military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. The subsequent dissolution of the local de facto authorities resulted in the exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians to Armenia proper (UNHCR, 2023). Within Armenia, public and elite criticism of the performance of Russian peacekeepers intensified, shifting national debate from a localized assessment of Moscow’s peacekeeping mandate to a systemic questioning of the country’s existing security architecture.
By 2024, Armenia had effectively frozen its active participation in the CSTO (Reuters, 2024). Simultaneously, Yerevan moved to expand defense procurement and technical cooperation with France, India, the United States, and the European Union. However, these steps did not amount to a complete pivot toward the West, as security diversification was not accompanied by an economic or institutional rupture with Moscow.
This dynamic is reflected in bilateral economic data. Trade turnover between Armenia and Russia climbed from approximately $2.6 billion in 2021 to $5.1 billion in 2022, reaching $7.3 billion in 2023 and $12.4 billion in 2024. In the first half of 2025, bilateral trade stood at approximately $3.4 billion. This surge in commerce after 2022, however, cannot be interpreted purely as an organic deepening of long-term economic integration; substantial components were linked to supply-chain rerouting and the re-export of goods amidst Western sanctions against the Russian Federation.
Throughout 2026, bilateral ties have endured despite public political disagreements. Official Armenian sources continue to designate Russia as a key commercial partner, and high-level technical and economic consultations continue. Concurrently, political discourse regarding Armenia’s future within the EAEU and its potential institutional convergence with the European Union has emerged as a persistent friction point.
Accordingly, the evolution of Armenian-Russian relations is characterized by a rapid security divergence running parallel to a much slower economic and institutional disentanglement. While Yerevan actively seeks alternative security partners to mitigate structural vulnerabilities, its extensive economic, institutional, and infrastructural connections with Russia continue to impose substantial parameters on its foreign policy latitude.
From “Complementarism” to “Strategic Hedging”
Recent shifts in Yerevan’s foreign policy cannot be characterized merely as an unreserved “turn toward the West.” Such an interpretation ignores the structural intricacies of Armenia’s external ties and the durability of its economic links with Moscow. At the same time, current policy cannot be viewed simply as a continuation of traditional complementarism—an approach predicated on maintaining an undisputed security alliance with Russia alongside parallel ties with Western and regional capitals.
The fundamental difference lies in the underlying assumptions of the two models. Under traditional complementarism, diplomatic and commercial diversification unfolded while Russia remained the recognized, stable anchor of Armenia’s defense architecture. Yerevan could broaden engagement with the West, Iran, and other partners without questioning Moscow’s role as the primary guarantor of national defense. The events of 2020 and 2023 undermined that baseline assumption.
Consequently, Yerevan’s procurement of defense assets and deepening of political ties with France, India, the United States, and the European Union are no longer routine exercises in diplomatic balancing; they are concrete efforts to reduce the risks of overreliance on a single patron. Concurrently, Armenia has avoided an overt diplomatic break with Moscow, retaining its major economic, commercial, and institutional connections. This simultaneous reduction of vulnerability in the security domain alongside the preservation of working ties in the economic sphere distinguishes Yerevan’s contemporary posture from a standard geopolitical realignment.
Conceptually, Armenia’s recent behavior aligns closely with the logic of “strategic hedging.” Under conditions of acute uncertainty, a hedging state avoids both unconditional alignment with a primary power and explicit balancing against it. Instead, it develops ties with multiple actors to mitigate vulnerabilities and preserve future decision-making options.
Caution is required, however, when applying this concept to Armenia. Residual institutional, infrastructural, and economic dependencies on Russia, combined with severe geographical constraints, preclude an unconstrained hedging strategy. For this reason, recent scholarly analyses of Armenian foreign policy utilize concepts such as “bounded hedging” or “tactical hedging” to capture the structural limits of this posture (Vasilyan, 2026; Sahakyan, 2026).
Armenia’s trajectory is therefore best understood as an incremental transition from Russia-centric complementarism toward bounded strategic hedging. This policy does not aim to rapidly replace Russia with the West, but rather to expand the number of external partnerships, reduce defense dependence on a single power, and enhance Armenia’s room for maneuver within an increasingly volatile, multipolar regional setting.
Iran, Syunik, and the New Logic of Geopolitical Diversification
Among Armenia’s external partners, the Islamic Republic of Iran occupies a distinct position. Since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, bilateral ties have been anchored in shared interests regarding energy integration, commerce, transit connectivity, and border stability. Official data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia indicates that collaboration across energy, transport, and infrastructure sectors remains sustained, with bilateral trade turnover reaching approximately $768 million in 2025 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, 2026).
Iran’s strategic significance for Armenia extends well beyond bilateral trade volumes. Throughout decades of closed borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan, the southern frontier with Iran has served as one of Armenia’s critical corridors to the outside world. For Iran, Armenia provides a direct overland transit link into the South Caucasus and onward toward the Black Sea. Bilateral ties therefore possess a structural geopolitical logic that transcends ordinary commercial interaction.
Energy cooperation remains one of the most stable components of this relationship. The long-standing gas-for-electricity swap arrangement and the expansion of high-voltage transmission lines, alongside joint highway construction and transit projects, demonstrate that bilateral engagement rests on durable physical infrastructure. Furthermore, Iran’s establishment of a Consulate General in Kapan in 2022 underscored Syunik Province’s elevated position within Tehran’s strategic calculations.
The strategic sensitivity of Syunik increased markedly following the 2020 war. Article 9 of the November 9 Trilateral Statement, which addressed unblocking regional economic and transport links, provoked contentious debates concerning the transit route connecting mainland Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (President of Russia, 2020)—frequently referred to in regional discourse as the “Zangezur Corridor.” From Tehran’s perspective, the primary concern is not commercial transit itself, but rather the legal and security status of the route, the preservation of the internationally recognized Armenian-Iranian border, and the prevention of unilateral geopolitical modifications in the South Caucasus.
In response, the Armenian government introduced the “Crossroads of Peace” initiative, asserting that regional transport links must operate strictly under the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national jurisdiction of the transit states (Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, 2023). This initiative represents Yerevan’s effort to depoliticize connectivity questions, reframing regional corridors from zero-sum geopolitical levers into mutually beneficial economic infrastructure grounded in sovereign equality.
Syunik has thus become the convergence point of three distinct strategic imperatives: Armenia’s need to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and international access; Iran’s priority to preserve its unhindered northern border and transit links; and the connectivity objectives of Azerbaijan and Turkey. As a result, the Syunik question has expanded beyond a localized transit dispute into a structural competition over the future geopolitical and infrastructural architecture of the South Caucasus.
Iran’s Place in Armenia’s Evolving Foreign Policy
Within Armenia’s new foreign policy framework, Iran cannot serve as a functional substitute for Russia. Tehran possesses neither the military capacity nor the strategic interest to assume the role of Armenia’s external security guarantor. Instead, Iran’s value lies in its role as a vital regional anchor for Armenia’s geopolitical diversification, mitigating the physical vulnerabilities of its landlocked geography.
This function becomes particularly relevant as Armenia moves toward bounded strategic hedging. If Yerevan’s objective is to expand its external options and avoid disproportionate dependence on any single actor, engagement with Iran offers geographic proximity, energy resources, and transit connectivity rooted in regional dynamics. Unlike some of Yerevan’s newer engagements with extra-regional powers, its relationship with Iran is supported by more than three decades of diplomatic institutionalization and durable, shared geographical interests.
Conversely, Armenia remains an indispensable transit partner for Iran. The country provides Tehran with a sovereign overland route to the South Caucasus and onward to European and Black Sea markets. The stability of the shared border, security in Syunik, and the future status of regional transit lines directly intersect with Iran’s vital geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.
Armenia’s foreign policy diversification presents Tehran with both opportunities and structural constraints. Yerevan’s enhanced strategic autonomy and decreased reliance on a single patron can widen the scope for bilateral cooperation. The implementation of transit initiatives under sovereign national jurisdiction also aligns with Iran’s interest in securing reliable northward connectivity.
However, any arrangement that alters the status of the Armenian-Iranian border, undermines Armenian sovereign authority over transit routes through Syunik, or introduces third-party military presences along Iran’s northern frontiers could generate severe friction. For Tehran, the fundamental issue is not Armenia’s diversification in principle, but rather the specific geopolitical and security outcomes that emerge from that recalibration.
Iran therefore represents an important, though not exclusive, pillar in Yerevan’s new foreign policy calculus. As Armenia continues to cultivate alternative partnerships and diminish asymmetric dependence on a single power, the value of regional partners that can expand its diplomatic maneuverability without imposing new structural dependencies will remain elevated.
Conclusion
Armenian foreign policy since 1991 cannot be characterized as a linear progression from a Russian orbit to a Western alignment. Originating as a pragmatic response to severe geopolitical isolation, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and acute defense vulnerabilities, the doctrine of complementarism sought to reconcile strategic reliance on Moscow with diplomatic engagement across the West, Iran, and other regional actors. Nonetheless, the prevailing security realities of the post-Soviet period inevitably established Russia as the dominant patron in Armenia’s defense architecture.
The 2020 war and the 2023 crisis fundamentally challenged this framework. Diminished confidence in Russian-led security guarantees prompted Yerevan to accelerate defense partnerships with alternative actors. However, this diversification has not amounted to a complete rupture with Moscow. Deeply entrenched trade flows, energy infrastructure, and institutional ties continue to sustain bilateral relations. Consequently, the defining characteristic of Armenia’s contemporary posture is a security divergence outpacing its economic and institutional recalibration.
Conceptually, this ongoing transition can best be understood as an incremental shift from Russia-centric complementarism toward bounded strategic hedging. Armenia neither seeks an abrupt severance from Moscow nor aspires to unilateral dependence on a Western patron. Rather, Yerevan’s strategy centers on multiplying external options, mitigating the risks of single-patron reliance, and preserving diplomatic room for maneuver across multiple international actors. For this reason, the notion of an unalloyed “pivot to the West” offers limited analytical utility for understanding Armenia’s contemporary policy.
Within this framework, Iran occupies an irreplaceable position. While Tehran cannot substitute for Moscow within Armenia’s broader defense matrix, it serves as a critical component of Yerevan’s geopolitical diversification. For Armenia, Iran represents an indispensable southern transit route, an energy partner, and a regional counterweight that expands its diplomatic flexibility. For Iran, Armenia provides an unimpeded overland link to the South Caucasus and the Black Sea, forming a key axis in the geopolitical stability of its northwestern periphery. The strategic centrality of Syunik has brought this alignment of interests into sharp relief.
Ultimately, thirty-five years after independence, the fundamental challenge confronting Armenian foreign policy is no longer reducible to a simplistic dichotomy between Russia and the West. It consists, rather, of the simultaneous management of territorial security, national sovereignty, economic resilience, and cross-border connectivity within a fractured multipolar order. The long-term efficacy of Yerevan’s strategy will depend on its ability to translate foreign policy diversification into genuine strategic autonomy without trading an old dependency for a new vulnerability. For Iran, the trajectory of this transition remains of vital importance, as the future of Armenian foreign policy is directly tied to the emerging geopolitical, transit, and security architecture along Iran’s northwestern borders.
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