Military parades are designed to communicate. When Armenia staged its first such display in a decade on May 28th in Yerevan's Republic Square, the message was deliberately polyglot with howitzers manufactured by France, rockets manufactured by India, drones by China, and missiles by Greece all passing by in a parade designed to emphasize their purchases following Russia's decision to stop selling them weapons, one thing in particular stood out within those purchases made from countries in the vicinity of NATO: The AD-08 Majid, an Iranian air-defence system mounted onto trucks by Iran's Defense Industries Organization.

The Armenian government did not disclose any information about the system’s origins and introduced it under the Armenian name of “Scorpion.” Around four pieces of the system had already been identified by open sources through videos released three days earlier. The timing could not have been more appropriate. It was taking place just hours after US President Donald Trump gave his endorsement to the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the lead-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7th, and after visiting the capital by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This was no fluke. According to reports from Iran International, a Persian news station, in July of 2024, the governments of Tehran and Yerevan signed an undisclosed arms deal worth an estimated $500 million in contracts split between them and completed by the first half of the year. The details for this contract came from a military officer in the Middle East region, detailing a wide array of weapons that included Shahed-series drones, Mohajer reconnaissance drones, and several air-defense missile systems like the Majid, 3rd Khordad, and Arman. While Armenia denied the allegations, Iran did not offer a statement at all. This denial has since grown stale, and the deployment of the Majid is confirmation enough.

According to reports, the deal went further than just the hardware deal. Co-operation in intelligence gathering, joint training exercises,........

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