The Armenia-Azerbaijan Deal: Securing Stability in the Caucasus and a New Eurasian Trade Network 

At the White House, Armenia and Azerbaijan’s leaders signed a peace agreement committing to end four decades of hostility and resolve territorial disputes. They also issued a complementary trilateral declaration to establish a U.S.-managed trade corridor connecting Azerbaijan proper with its western exclave Nakhichevan through a 32-km wide portion of southern Armenia that separates the two areas. This “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) will be leased to the United States for 99 years. TRIPP (referred to in Azerbajiani and Turkish circles as the “Zangezur Corridor”) envisions developing energy, telecom, and transport nodes—mere kilometers north of Armenia’s border with Iran—and linking to existing infrastructure networks on both sides.  

The accord most urgently aims to prevent renewed armed conflict and normalize relations between the post-Soviet Caucasus nations. The countries severed diplomatic ties and closed their shared borders after a 1994 ceasefire (the Turkish-Armenian border has also stayed closed), with trade and person-to-person interaction all but nonexistent since then. Wars in 2020 and 2023 resulted in Azerbaijan capturing the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory and surrounding Armenia-held lands and the departure of 120,000 Armenians. Baku subsequently preconditioned restoring ties with Yerevan on guaranteed access to Nakhichevan through Armenia, hinting at a military option should diplomacy fail. TRIPP seeks to overcome this seeming impasse through anchoring U.S. security guarantees and fostering pragmatic win-win cooperation in the spirit of similar Trump economic-centric initiatives between neighbors with a tumultuous history, such as the Abraham Accords and the Rwanda-DRC deal.  

United States and Türkiye In, Russia and Iran Out

Geopolitically, the deal diminishes Russia’s longstanding sphere of influence in the Caucasus. Moscow’s 30-year role in leading Armenian-Azerbaijan peace efforts through the OSCE Minsk Group is superseded by Washington as the new security guarantor. The corridor straddles the Armenia-Iran border, presumably disrupting Tehran’s overland link to Russia and a maritime route to Europe. For this reason, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Kremlin have vaguely threatened the corridor. In contrast, Türkiye stands to gain from TRIPP through its short border with Nakhichevan, easing overland transport to Azerbaijan proper and spurring new investment opportunities for its economically lagging eastern provinces. Ankara further benefits from an enhanced role as an energy, trade, and supply chain conduit between Europe and the Caucasus, if not farther afield in Central Asia.  

A Northern IMEC Spur and BRI Alternative?

TRIPP serves the same geostrategic vision as the United States and G20-backed India-Middle East-Europe (IMEC) corridor, first announced in September 2023: an intercontinental trade route globally advancing an American-supported geo-commercial order and locally encouraging once-suspicious neighbors to pragmatically cooperate based on shared geography and economic interests. To long-feuding Yerevan and Baku, TRIPP offers an American security umbrella and global prestige as the linchpin of a Eurasian commercial nexus. Much like IMEC’s potential to be extended to U.S. allies in Southeast Asia, TRIPP could conceivably be expanded across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia’s former Soviet republics. Both corridors foresee a pivotal role for global Western businesses and local private sector counterparts in their practical development and supplementary economic opportunities. Amid U.S.-China strategic competition, these twin corridors present viable Eurasian alternatives to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Türkiye notably protested its lack of inclusion in IMEC upon its inception; nearly two years later, TRIPP could serve to compensate Ankara with a key geo-commercial role and temper its opposition to the complementary southern corridor. 

Armenia Revitalized, Nakhichevan Open for Business

 

TRIPP greenlights Armenia’s restoration of relations with Azerbaijan and Türkiye while offering U.S. security assurances and integration into a Western trade and economic bloc. By committing to this deal, Yerevan overturns decades of geo-commercial isolation that pushed it to be overly reliant on economically weak Iran and Russia, in favor of tighter alignment with advanced Western economies and formerly hostile but prosperous neighbors. Foreign businesses that had been hesitant to invest or expand operations in Armenia due to this isolation and/or the prospect of renewed war with its Turkic neighbors can be reassured by TRIPPS’s commitment to Yerevan’s regional and international integration.  

Landlocked Nakhichevan is roughly the size of Luxembourg, with a mostly rural population of half a million and an $850 million GDP primarily based on industrial manufacturing and traditional agriculture. Economic development has been stymied due to the Armenian border closure, which has compelled a circuitous and costly overland route via Iran to access Azerbaijan proper. TRIPP’s direct linking of Azerbaijan’s two sides, synchronized with a soon-to-be completed high-speed Türkiye-Nakhichevan railway, could unlock the exclave’s isolation and raise its global profile. The currently lesser-known territory can be expected to receive increasing attention from global businesses eager to scout investment opportunities and identify untapped development potential. With TRIPP’s direct overland access, multinationals with well-established operations in Baku and a developed network of local stakeholder partners are best suited to capitalize on prospective western Azerbaijan investments. Given Nakhichevan’s longstanding agrarian and industry-intensive status, promising opportunities for foreign businesses could include promoting digital transformation, building a homegrown innovation and technological ecosystem, and deepening the exclave’s integration into the global financial community.   

The Road Ahead

The Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process and its complementary regional—and possibly intercontinental—trade corridor represent a bold initiative to overturn longstanding South Caucasian geopolitical deadlock in favor of stability and shared prosperity. The TRIPP vision aims to project U.S. influence in a region historically considered Russia’s backyard, politically orienting former Soviet republics to the West and economically away from China’s BRI.  

The initial deal requires ratification by both countries’ legislatures, with lawmakers needing to be convinced that cooperating with a longstanding enemy and joining a U.S.-supported trade network outweighs the deal’s territorial adjustments and perceptions of having “surrendered” to the other side. Strong and consistent U.S. leadership as an honest broker will be vital in finalizing the contours of the deal in a mutually acceptable manner. Likewise, Iranian and Russian opposition to the project—and unspecified threats to disrupt it—could test American resolve to ensure its feasibility as well as challenge President Trump’s policy of decreasing international military posturing.