Great pomp and circumstance surrounded the Aug. 8 signing at the White House of a “joint declaration for peace” between President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, whose two countries have been in on-again/off-again conflict for decades.
U.S. President Donald Trump presided over the ceremony, and took full credit for the “success” of getting both sides to agree to the construction of a 50 km. road connecting Azerbaijan to its exclave province of Nakhchivan, passing through the mountainous southernmost region of Armenia. Known as the Zangezur corridor, it has now been renamed “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.” In exchange for helping to build and militarily secure the transport corridor—which is to eventually include a rail line, oil and gas lines, and fiber optic lines—the U.S. was granted a 99-year development lease to control the strip, which is expected to be run by a private company. The deal “brings U.S. presence to the heart of Russia’s hinterland” immediately across the border from Iran, an excited Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Financial Times.
On the eve of the signing of the deal, Newsweek pointed to some of the geopolitical implications. “Meanwhile, Moscow and Tehran have another interest in the region, which involves the proposed [sic] International North-South Transport Corridor that would establish a sanctions-proof rail route extending from India to Russia. The so-called ‘Trump Bridge’ has the potential to disrupt this plan.” In fact, the land version of the North-South corridor, which is already functioning with a sea link across the Caspian, runs through Azerbaijan itself. Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev positions himself as the center of a Eurasia-wide hub: east-west from China to Türkiye, north-south from Russia to India.
Alternate routes for the INSTC have been studied that cross from Iran into Armenia, rather than Azerbaijan. Newsweek quoted Tigran Grigoryan, director of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security in Armenia: “Since the route lies along the Iran-Armenia border, Tehran sees any weakening of Armenian sovereignty over it as a direct threat to both its northern border and to the North-South transport corridor, which connects Iran to Europe via Armenian territory.”
