Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi hold a trilateral meeting in Tehran on 19 July 2022. On the margins of the summit of the guarantor countries of the Astana process on Syria. This trilateral Moscow-Tehran-Ankara format aimed at resolving the situation in Syria was organised in 2017 and has been operating for five years. Since then, the parties have managed to achieve, if not an end to the civil war, then a significant reduction in the intensity of the confrontation in Syria and the beginning of the return of Syrian refugees.

Thus, the current meeting in Tehran is very symbolic and clearly "outgrows" the format of the Syrian issues. Especially since Russia has another front in addition to Syria - the Ukrainian one. Russia's aggression against Ukraine clearly did not follow the original plan, the blitzkrieg failed and Russia not only had to transfer its most combat-ready formations from Syria to Ukraine, but also had to withdraw a significant part of the "peacekeepers" from Azerbaijani Karabakh and occupation troops from the occupied Georgian Abkhazia and Tskhivali regions.

Understandably, without mutual understanding with Turkey and Iran, this "bare flanks and rear" is fraught with serious problems for the Russian Federation in its "regions of interest". Despite the predictions of those seeking to stir up Turkish-Russian conflicts wherever possible (including in the South Caucasus), Ankara did not take advantage of Moscow's "bogging down" in Ukraine. Although "well-wishers" encouraged Turkey to seize the moment and expand its zone of influence in Syria.

In the South Caucasus, Turkey has generally welcomed Armenia by initiating the process of unblocking the border (the sides have agreed to allow goods and citizens of third countries to cross the border) and by making it clear that it too will not "seize the moment" of Russia's weakening in the region (something the Armenian revanchists are very afraid of).   Moreover, Turkey is now actively playing the role of mediator between Russia and Ukraine, trying to stop the war and actually helping the same Ukraine to export grain.

Several experts have compared the current meeting of the three leaders in Tehran to the meeting of the leaders of the USSR, Britain and the USA in the same Tehran in November 1943. Of course, the scale of the meeting is not as global, but for the Middle East and the post-Soviet space cooperation of these three regional powers is necessary. Especially when one considers the "external forces" that want to pit Turkey against Russia on one side and Iran on the other.

For Iran, cooperation with Turkey has been important for a long time, and it will only expand in the near future. It is no coincidence that the 7th meeting of the Turkey-Iran High-Level Cooperation Council was held in Tehran with the participation of Presidents Ibrahim Raisi and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the two countries. Also, on July 19, 2022, Iran and Turkey signed agreements on cooperation in the fields of transit traffic development, scientific and cultural exchanges, sports, energy, culture, agriculture and trade and economic exchanges. The documents were signed by the heads of the respective agencies of the two countries.

Definitely one of the main areas is transit, where Iran and Turkey will cooperate by connecting Azerbaijan and Georgia. And, perhaps for the first time in history, Russia not only has nothing against new transit corridors that bypass its territory, but intends to connect to them with its cargo flows.

The fact is that today it is Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia that are becoming a kind of "window to the outside world" for Russia, which has been "blocked with sanctions" by the West since the start of the war in Ukraine. If this window is extended to Iran, which, firstly, has access to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf and, secondly, a land route from Central Asia to the South Caucasus, this would only benefit all sections of these projects.

Therefore, Ankara, Tehran and Moscow are all interested in finally unblocking communications in the South Caucasus. This applies first and foremost to the Zangezur corridor, without which the existing transit routes are no longer able to cope with growing freight flows.

It is symbolic that, on the eve of the meeting in Tehran, there was the first direct meeting between the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Georgia, in Tbilisi, where the issue of unblocking communications and opening corridors was also discussed. In other words, the 3+3 format is in fact starting to work, although it is still not legally formalised. However, all the countries in the region are now more interested than ever in opening the borders to transit traffic and developing mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

Kavkazplus