Iran is ready to launch the railway with Armenia, but under one condition, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Armenia Seyed Kazem Sajjadi said yesterday, after the opening of an audience for Iranian studies on the faculty of foreign relations at Yerevan State University.

“The relations between IRI and Armenia are very good. We are ready to launch the railway, if Yerevan introduces its investor. We just need to make joint investment in these areas. You make the first step and we will make the next one.” – Sajjadi said, according to Novostink.ru

“The Armenian side should try to find investors”, – Sejjadi added.

However, it would be very difficult for Yerevan, to meet this quite logical requirement of Iran, which doesn’t want to build the interstate infrastructure for its own money – Armenia is quite unattractive place for investment, due to unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and blockade of the borders. It is recognized in Armenia itself. Recently, the Deputy Chairman of the party “Armenian National Congress” Aram Manukyan, spoke about the problems in attracting of investment to the country in an interview with “Vestnik Kavkaza”.

We are sort of absent in the region. Armenia de jure exists in Caucasus, but doesn’t participate in any project passing through this region. We are at an impasse in economical sense, that’s why no one invests in Armenia. While in the past we received at least $3-4 billions of investment,  last year we received only $120 million, this is nothing. Corruption complicates things, as no sane person will ever risk investing his money in Armenia”, – he said, adding that the country is caught in an impasse by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“War can never contribute to the development of the country, because development and growth of economy requires peaceful, sustainable domestic and foreign political state of being. We don’t have this due to the conflict: semi-peace – semi-war is not the environment, anyone should invest in. The biggest issue and challenge for Armenia is to resolve Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This issue has to be addressed and we put it at the top of our political program, running for Parliamentary elections last year. End of the war is Armenia’s only path of development and integration”, Aram Manukyan emphasized.