The company is the part of the Washington design that Yerevan writes itself. Signed in Washington on 1 June and in Yerevan on 4 June, the framework agreement gives the TRIPP Development Company 74% to the United States and 26% to Armenia for 49 years, with 49% for Armenia in a 50-year extension, and land-use and development rights on a specified territory; border control, customs, migration, taxes and state information systems stay with Armenia, on the foreign minister's July account. On Wednesday the Constitutional Court found the agreement in conformity with the constitution; the text of the decision follows within 3 days, and then the National Assembly votes on ratification.
Pashinyan told the Assembly on Wednesday that the route runs from Azerbaijan's border to Azerbaijan's border under Armenian jurisdiction. Baku's definition, given by foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov in Baku on Tuesday, has entry and exit through Azerbaijan and physical work from 2027. Thursday's meeting on the charter and the shareholder agreement came the day after the ruling.
Tehran's ambassador's remarks were reported the same evening. In Armenia Today's account, Shirgholami said Iran had felt serious concern about the presence of Americans on the Armenia-Iran border, that the best way to remove it would be a joint institutionalised mechanism created with Armenia's government, and that such a format was vitally necessary. He added that Azerbaijan, which gains a link to Nakhchivan across Armenia, should in turn provide a rail link between Iran and Armenia through Nakhchivan, called the project a historical test for Armenia's leadership, and said Iran would take a very clear position if Armenia's sovereignty were threatened. NEWS.am's headline has him promising a very serious position should Armenia be threatened.
The company is the part of the Washington design that Yerevan writes itself.
The position is not new in substance. At a press conference in July, ARKA reported, Shirgholami said the Armenian-Iranian agenda on TRIPP should be concentrated on managing risks, and that the Armenian government had assured Tehran the project would bring no challenge or threat to Iran, including from the American presence. In March he had said the route must never become an instrument in the hands of external forces against Iran, and that Yerevan had assured him it would have no military purpose.
What is new is the timing and the ask. The framework agreement, as the foreign minister described it in July, names two shareholders, and Thursday's meeting was about the papers that constitute them. No date for the Assembly's ratification vote had appeared on Armenpress by Friday morning.