On August 8, 2025, President Donald Trump hosted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House, where the two foreign leaders signed a peace agreement. The White House released a statement that the agreement, initiated under the Biden administration, is “a landmark achievement for international diplomacy that only President Trump could deliver.”
On January 13, 2026, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan returned to Washington to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss implementation of the agreed corridor across southern Armenia, which Trump insisted be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
If sincerity is the basis of peace, then the chances for a lasting solution are tiny. None of the partners professing to seek peace is sincere. Trump seeks a Nobel Prize and his name on signs. Rubio will play the loyal yes-man to keep his job, regardless of where his moral compass might point. The deeply unpopular Pashinyan — who increasingly seems like the Armenian version of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili — rushes concessions to position himself as the only candidate in forthcoming elections who can deliver peace, no matter that under his watch, Armenia fought two wars and lost both badly. Aliyev, meanwhile, hopes to use the corridor to bifurcate Armenia’s Syunik province. Azerbaijan’s hostage-taking and kangaroo courts appear designed to humiliate Armenians and undermine peace more than achieve it.
The basic problem with the TRIPP is that it serves no economic purpose. Azerbaijan and Turkey could enjoy trade and transit across Armenia if they established diplomatic relations and ended their blockade. That is a decision that only Ankara can make, as Turkey calls the broader strategic shots for Azerbaijan.
Indeed, while Azerbaijan and Turkey argue they need a corridor to enable trade, they play Trump and Rubio for fools. The entire time that Aliyev whined about Armenia’s blockaded border being an impediment to trade, Azerbaijan directed its trade through Iran, a country whose trade relations with Azerbaijan exceed Armenia’s. Indeed, in 2022, Azerbaijan and Iran signed an agreement for a new transit corridor through Iran.
