Iran Won’t Allow Trump-Backed Azerbaijan Corridor, Top Aide Says

Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's president, from left, US President Donald Trump, and Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia's prime minister, hold up an agreement signed during a ceremony at the  White House on Aug. 8.

Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Iran opposes the creation of a corridor near the Iranian border linking Azerbaijan to its Naxcivan exclave, proposed as part of a US-brokered Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal, an aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday.

Ali Akbar Velayati said the South Caucasus region wasn’t “some no-man’s land” that US President Donald Trump can lease, the Tasnim news agency reported. “Trump seems to think he’s a real estate broker and wants to lease a land or region.”