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Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan stresses the need to take relations between Armenia and Iran to a new level of strategic partnership.

His comments came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned against attempts to “block” the Armenian-Iranian border at a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.

“If there is a policy to block the border between Iran and Armenia, the Islamic Republic will oppose it since this border has been a communication route for thousands of years,” Khamenei said.

He made a similar statement at a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Islamic Republic will not tolerate policies or plans that lead to the closing of the Iran-Armenia border,” Khamenei said in a tweet, separately.

“Remarkably, Syunik remains Armenian primarily thanks to Iran. Thus, Armenian-Iranian relations should be taken to a new strategic level, making it one of the foundations of our new security architecture,” Geghamyan wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

Also, he condemned the Armenian authorities for handing over a section of the existing Armenia-Iran highway to Azerbaijan.

“Instead of deepening cooperation with Iran, Armenia’s capitulant authorities ceded the only road connecting Armenia and Iran to Azerbaijan, and there is no new [alternative] road,” the expert said.