Iran has condemned the creation of a corridor located along Armenia’s southern border with Iran as agreed upon in Washington D.C. on August 8.

Iran's Tasnim News Agency reports that Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will prevent its creation whether Moscow joins its efforts or not.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan (PM Nikol Pashinyan, President Ilham Aliyev, signed a document on August 8 calling for the creation of the so-called “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) that will connect Azerbaijan proper with its Nakhijevan exclave via Armenia’s Syunik Province.

Velayati, according to Tasnim, said such a corridor will turn into a graveyard of the mercenaries of Donald Trump, not a route owned by the US president.

The Iranian official said the people of Armenia strongly oppose the plan because it will lead to the country’s disintegration.

Velayati described the route, aka the Zangezur Corridor as not merely a trade route, but a political plot against Iran and other neighboring countries.

“Apart from Turkey, which is a member of NATO, the other NATO countries want to be present in this region too. NATO wants to lie between Iran and Russia like a viper, but Iran will not permit it,” Tasnim quotes Velayati as saying.

While the Iranian foreign ministry welcomed the August 8 peace declaration, describing it “an important step on the path to achieving sustainable peace in the region”, it said any transportation links “must preserve the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the countries, without any external interference.”

(The Tasnim News Agency, launched in 2012,  is a semi-official news agency in Iran controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - IRGC)