President Donald Trump met with 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 Trump referred to as a “peace deal,” includes 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.
“It’s a long time,” Trump said at the ceremony. “Thirty-five years they fought and now they’re friends and they’re going to be friends for a long time.” He added that the new transit route will allow Azerbaijan to get full access to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh while respecting Armenia’s sovereignty and allowing the U.S. to develop the corridor for “up to 99 years.”
“They’re going to be able to really live and work together,” Trump said.
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.
Read more: Inside Armenia’s Mission to Make Itself Indispensable
Since then, Armenia and Azerbaijan have yet to agree where the border would run between them. Ahead of Friday’s signing ceremony, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed 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 had earlier 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 and establishing the new U.S. trade route would be toward lasting peace, though the leaders of both countries indicated that they are committed to peace and intended to honor the agreement, which is not a legally-binding document.
“There should be no doubt and no suspicion that any of the sides would step back,” Aliyev of Azerbaijan said. “If any of us, Prime Minister Pashinyan or myself, had in mind to step back, we wouldn’t have come here. So you can be absolutely sure, as well as Azerbaijani community, that what has happened today will result in peace—long-lasting peace, eternal peace in the Caucasus.”
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.
“I came in and this whole world was on fire,” Trump said Friday. “All these things were sort of happening. We’ve only been here for six months. The world was on fire. We took care of just about every fire.”
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan both said they would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. “We will defend that, and we will promote for that,” Pashinyan of Armenia said. Aliyev added: “Who, if not President Trump, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize? …As soon as we [return], we will agree to issue a joint letter.”
Earlier on Friday, the White House said 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.”
Trump said he anticipates “significant infrastructure development by American companies” along the route, which he believes will “economically benefit all three of our nations.”
