Executive Summary

This report assesses the strategic significance of establishing multiple foreign consular missions in Armenia’s Syunik region and along the prospective corridor.

It evaluates how such diplomatic presences serve not only to deepen bilateral partnerships and defence cooperation, but also to consolidate geopolitical influence in a territory increasingly contested by regional and global actors. The report examines also the deepening defence cooperation between Yerevan and Paris in the context of renewed Azerbaijani threats to Armenian sovereignty, particularly regarding the proposed “Zangezur Corridor.”

As France and Iran position themselves as key partners to Armenia, the report further examines the scope of US engagement in the country and Russia’s deployment of soft power. It concludes with an analysis of Syunik’s connectivity potential, highlighted by the “Crossroads of Peace” initiative, and considers the geopolitical risks tied to Europe’s ambitions to link with Central Asia via Azerbaijani territory.

Key Takeaways

1. France is formalising a strategic partnership with Armenia, including military cooperation and positioning itself in Syunik—a region at the heart of competing geopolitical interests.
2. Azerbaijan portrays Armenia’s Western alignment, particularly with France, as a threat, using media narratives to discredit peace efforts and justify escalatory rhetoric.
3. The Syunik region risks becoming a flashpoint as Iran opposes any territorial shifts, Russia reasserts cultural presence, and Europe and the US navigate ambiguous roles amid Armenian-Turkish-Azerbaijani tensions.

Information Background

On March 2, 2025, France opened an honorary consulate in the southern Armenian region of Syunik, in the city of Goris, next to the Goris Municipality houses. France appointed Karmen Apunts, an Armenian national and Director of the French Cultural Centre in Goris for almost twenty years, as its Honorary Consul.

French Ambassador to Armenia Olivier Decottignies attended the inauguration ceremony, along with Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan and Syunik Governor Robert Ghukasyan. The Honorary Consulate’s opening coincides with the 5^th Armenia-France Decentralised Cooperation Conference, also taking place in Goris, bringing together over 400 officials, lawmakers, and local leaders from both countries.

France’s support for Armenia has moved beyond gestures. It is now a strategic partnership aimed at peace, development, and defence.

According to Decottignies, defence cooperation between Paris and Yerevan in 2025 will focus on three main areas: provision of defence equipment, training of Armenian military personnel in Armenia and in France, Paris providing consulting services to the Armenian Defence Ministry to assist in the reform and strengthening of the Armenian Armed Forces.

Geopolitical Scenario

With the opening of the consular office, France has become the second country to have a diplomatic presence in Syunik, following Iran’s launch of a consulate in the provincial capital Kapan in October 2022. While Russia also announced its intention to open a consulate in the town in 2023, there has been no progress in this regard so far.

France’s decision to choose Goris is rooted in the town’s longstanding cultural ties with the Francophone world. Goris has been home to a French cultural centre since 2006 and is considered one of Armenia’s most Francophone cities, where French is widely taught in schools.

Moreover, security concerns underpin this choice. France voiced its willingness to open a consulate in the Syunik border region after the Azerbaijani military offensive and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh region. On one side, Paris provided economic aid to the tens of thousands forcibly displaced people who accommodated in the Syunik region, on the other, given the security challenges posed by Baku’s territorial claims regarding Armenian, French Ambassador Decottignies stressed that the French state, its society, and its organisations, remain on Armenia’s side.

While Moscow’s decision not to intervene during the military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh served the Western narrative of Russia being an unreliable partner for Armenia, to push Yerevan into the European/US orbit, Azerbaijan exploited France closeness to the Christian Caucasian state to hamper the peace process. For several months, in fact, the Azerbaijani government has portrayed Armenia as an unreliable actor, citing its ongoing rearmament as a source of concern.

Azerbaijani narrative has ranged from an escalation in information dissemination strategy, particularly through the Ministry of Defence’s daily reports of alleged Armenian ceasefire violations, to assertions that Armenia is part of “Western Azerbaijan”.

Azerbaijani media strategy has also included interviews with European scholars, invited by Baku to the so-called liberated territories of Karabakh to back Baku’s military achievement, in which Paris is accused of obstructing the peace process because of its support for Armenia. Moreover, Azerbaijani media such as Caliber reported the opening of the new French consulate, stressing that Armenia has become a state of proxy, a client state, where power exists only because patrons support it, aligning with Azerbaijan’s state narrative.

During the opening session of the Yerevan Dialogue 2025, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan issued a forceful call for peace with Azerbaijan, referencing a completed agreement drafted in March. Armenia expressed readiness to sign it and to dissolve the OSCE Minsk Group, in order to meet Baku’s requests, and stressed that there are no claims over Azerbaijani territories in Armenia’s Constitution.

Pashinyan also presented the country’s “Crossroads for Peace” initiative, which, thanks to Armenia’s strategic location, might connect the Black Sea, the Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The last two corridors will cross Azerbaijan and Turkey, therefore peace is an essential precondition to the success of the proposed project, while the route to the Gulf is already a successful one given the strong partnership between Yerevan and Tehran. However, during the event, critics emerged over Azerbaijan’s insistence on exclusive transit corridors crossing Armenia and connecting Azerbaijan to it exclave Nakhchivan, what Baku calls the “Zangezur Corridor”.

Concerningly, European inaction during Azerbaijan’s offensive and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and its failure to hold Baku accountable for human rights violations and Armenophobia raises some concern for Brussel’s willingness to prevent Azerbaijan from gaining the corridor with the force. While US Secretary of State affirmed Washington was working to prevent Azerbaijan from invading Armenia, therefore admitting that US intelligence gathered evidences about such a possibility, Europe might benefit from the “Zangezur Corridor” through Armenia, as it will finally serve Brussels long pursued goal to connect Central Asia to Europe via Turkey.

The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Khatibzadeh reiterated Tehran’s long-standing position that any initiative resulting in a change to the region’s geopolitical map is unacceptable, staunchly opposing the Baku-proposed corridor, which will cut the Iran-Armenia strategic territorial link.

Conclusion

The Syunik region will become the cradle of multiple foreign actors’ competing interests. While some unconfirmed sources reported meetings between Iranian and French representatives whose interests in the Southern Armenian regions currently align, on the other hand French exploit Armenian dissatisfaction with Russia to distance Moscow from Yerevan.

On one side, this might pressure Armenia, forcing it to choose between Moscow and Western support. On the other side, Russia plans to open three additional branches of the Russian Science and Culture Centre (Rossotrudnichestvo) in Vanadzor, Ijevan, and Kapan, an expansion that builds upon the existing centre in Gyumri, underscores that Moscow has not given up its partnership with Yerevan, and also regards the Syunik region as strategic.

France’s opening of an honorary consulate in Armenia’s Syunik region marks a strategic move deepening its defence, political, and cultural engagement in a geopolitically sensitive area, where Western influence, Iranian interests, and Russian competition converge amidst rising tensions with Azerbaijan.

*Cover image: the map of the “Crossroad for Peace” which interests the Syunik region (material provided during the Yerevan Dialogue 2025)