From left to right, President Azerbaijani Ilham Aliev, his American counterpart Donald Trump and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian, in 2025 (AFP / Ludovic Marin)
Armenia and Azerbaijan, whom a territorial conflict has been opposed for years, will sign on Friday in Washington a agreement qualified as “historic” by Donald Trump, which also allows the United States to advance their pawns in a highly strategic region.
“Many leaders have tried to end the war, until now, until now, thanks to +Trump +,” said the American president on Thursday evening on his Truth Social network.
Donald Trump, who considers the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation efforts in various conflicts, said that a “peace signing ceremony” would be organized during this “historic summit” with the participation of President Azerbaijani Ilham Aliev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian.
The Armenian leader arrived shortly before 3:00 p.m. locally (7:00 p.m. GMT) at the White House for an interview with the American president. The Azerbaijani leader is expected a little later, also for a bilateral meeting with Donald Trump, before the meeting and the tripartite signature.
The two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus will “sign a joint declaration” providing for the creation of a “transit zone” passing through Armenia and connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhitchevan enclave more west, said Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, Friday in an exchange with the press.
– TRIPP –
US President Donald Trump receives Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House on August 8, 2025 (AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)
This transit zone, which responds to a longtime claim of Baku, will be named “Trump path for peace and international prosperity” (tripp, its acronym in English), she said. The United States will have development rights.
In addition, according to Anna Kelly, Azerbaijan and Armenia “will sign a joint letter officially asking the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) to dissolve the Minsk group”, created in 1992 for mediation purposes between the two countries.
Asked about what Armenia derived from this agreement, a senior American official judged that Erevan was gaining “the most enormous and most crucial partner in the world, the United States”, but he did not extend to the always very sensitive issue of Karabakh.
“The losers here are China, Russia and Iran,” he said, under the guise of anonymity.
Armenian refugees flee the karabakh against the Azerbaijani army offensive on September 28, 2023 (AFP / Siranush Sargsyan)
The contested region of Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was checked for three decades by Armenian separatists after a war which they had won at the dislocation of the USSR, and which had caused the exodus of almost all the Azeris who lived it.
Baku partially took over this enclave during a new war in the fall of 2020, then entirely during an Éclair offensive in September 2023, in turn caught the flight of more than 100,000 Armenians of Karabakh.
– Trauma –
Anxious to go beyond the conflict, Bakou and Erevan agreed in March on the text of a peace treaty.
But Azerbaijan, victorious, demands that Armenia first modify its constitution to officially renounce any territorial claim on Karabakh.
Nikol Pachinian said he was ready to comply, announcing his intention to organize a constitutional referendum in 2027. But the trauma of the loss of Karabakh, called Artsakh in Armenian, continues to divide his country.
The announcement of Friday relaunched, among supporters of Donald Trump, the calls to award the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Forget the Nobel Prize. There should be a Trump prize,” said Televangelist Johnnie Moore, an ally of the Republican President.
“It is more than time that Donald Trump receives the Nobel Peace Prize,” said his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt last week, giving examples of his mediations between India and Pakistan, Cambodia and Thailand or Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo … but ignoring his promises, so far in vain, to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
