Trump to Host 'Peace Deal' With Azerbaijan and Armenia That Gives U.S. Access to Key Transit Route

President Donald Trump is set to meet the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia on Friday to sign a joint peace declaration aimed at ending nearly four decades of conflict between the two former Soviet states. The agreement, which the White House is touting as a “peace deal,” will include a pact giving the U.S. exclusive rights to develop a transit route through a mountainous stretch of Armenian territory between Azerbaijan known as the Zangezur corridor. The securing of that route marks a significant setback for Russia and Iran in the South Caucasus, a region that sits at the crossroads of trade and energy flows that both countries have long sought to dominate. The route will be named after Trump, with the Administration calling it the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity—or TRIPP, for short. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been in conflict since 1988—the final years of the USSR—when ethnic tensions and violence erupted over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which later declared independence from Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. Intermittent clashes killed more than 30,000 people in the early 1990s and at least 6,000 during a 44-day conflict in 2020. Russia has long sought to negotiate a permanent peace agreement in the region, with President Vladimir Putin brokering a ceasefire in 2020 and regularly convening the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia. But after Russia turned its attention to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin’s influence over the conflict began to wane. In 2023, Russian military forces stationed in the region failed to prevent Azerbaijan from taking control over the Nagorno-Karabakh area, forcing around 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee their homes.  Since then, Armenia and Azerbaijan have yet to agree where the border would run between them. During Friday’s signing ceremony, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are expected to sign a joint letter officially requesting that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an intergovernmental body, disband the Minsk Group, which was formed in 1994 to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The group is chaired by Russia, France, and the United States, but was considered powerless by some as it was not able to prevent Azerbaijan from taking the disputed enclave by force in 2023. Trump framed the agreement as a “peace deal,” writing on Truth Social that “Many Leaders have tried to end the War, with no success, until now, thanks to ‘TRUMP.” It’s unclear how significant a step withdrawing from the Minsk Group would be toward lasting peace. The deal adds to the handful of peace and economic agreements brokered this year by Trump, who has made no secret of his wish to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Several world leaders have nominated Trump for the award for his role in addressing long-running conflicts across the globe, including a tentative peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and a trade agreement that stopped a conflict between Cambodia and Thailand. Indian officials have recently refuted Trump’s claims of the U.S. playing a pivotal role in ending a conflict with Pakistan in May. Escalating wars in Gaza and Ukraine, meanwhile, remain unresolved. According to the White House, the arrangement between Azerbaijan and Armenia would give the U.S. exclusive development rights to a transit route across southern Armenia that is meant to bolster cooperation in energy, technology and the economy. “What this will do for American businesses, and, frankly, for energy resources across Europe, will be enormously powerful,” a senior administration official told reporters on a call previewing the deal. “The losers here are China, Russia and Iran. The winners here are the West.”