Armenia and Iran hold joint military drills amid strains over Azerbaijan, nuclear program

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Military units of the IRGC Ground Force are seen as they launched war games in the Gulf, December 2018. Hamed Malekpour/Tasnim News Agency via REUTERS

(Reuters) -     Iran and Armenia were set to conclude two days of joint military exercises along their shared border on Thursday, amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program and between longtime rivals Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Armenia's defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the drills, involving the two sides' special forces, were to take place on either side of the countries' remote 44 km (26 mile) shared frontier.

It said the two sides would practice responding to "attacks by simulated terrorist groups" on border checkpoints.

"The aim of these drills is consolidating the security of the borders on the basis of shared interests of the two countries," Iran's state media cited a Revolutionary Guards official as saying. 

Armenia, which has moved closer to the West in recent years, nevertheless preserves warm relations with Iran, which is engaged in a standoff with Western countries over its nuclear ambitions.

Armenia's borders with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey have been closed for more than three decades, giving its mountainous frontier with Iran an outsized economic significance.

The Iranian border area is at the forefront of Armenia's own tensions with Azerbaijan, with which it has been locked in conflict for almost four decades over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan has demanded Armenia provide it with a corridor through the border area, linking Baku to its exclave of Nakhchivan and its ally, Turkey.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan said last month that they had agreed the text of a peace treaty to end their conflict, but have since traded blame for several incidents of gunfire along their heavily militarised border.

Armenia has deepened ties with the West in recent years, as relations with traditional ally Russia have soured, with some Armenians accusing Moscow of failing to protect them from Azerbaijan.

 (Reporting by Felix Light and Elwely Elwelly, Editing by William Maclean)