Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
On August 8, President Donald Trump hosted a White House summit between Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which resulted in a preliminary peace deal to end the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) is a corridor that could become a mammoth transport hub between Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
The flow of Central Asian hydrocarbons to Turkiye and Europe could boost the regional economy, at the expense of Russia and China.
Armenia was hesitant to allow Azeri access to the corridor, but Trump reassured Pashinyan, and closed the deal.
Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Vera Yacoubian, a part-time instructor in Political Science and History at both the American University of Beirut and Haigazian University. In addition to her academic roles, she serves as the Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of the Middle East as an advocate for the Armenian Genocide and regional issues.
1. Steven Sahiounie (SS): What strategic interests motivated the United States to broker the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal, particularly the development of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity?
Vera Yacoubian (VY): The U.S. engaged in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks, aiming at more than a temporary halt to fighting. Washington treated the expected deal as leverage to reshape the South Caucasus in a manner designed to marginalize both Moscow and Tehran influence, who for years dominated the region's security arrangements. At the core of this recalibration stood the proposed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a transit axis crossing southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan exclave and, from there, to Turkey. By advocating this corridor, the U.S. intended to weave a new east-west trade and energy framework that evaded Russian and Iranian territory, thereby unlocking alternative channels for Caspian energy exports and integrating markets from Europe to Central Asia. Moreover, TRIPP would offer an alternative to Chinas trade infrastructure, especially through Iran. TRIPP, in this arrangement, functioned both as a channel for commerce and as a geopolitical lever, tightening the region's two primary states to the U.S. and EU economic and policy orbit.
The agreement permitted the Trump administration to characterize the outcome as a notable diplomatic triumph, thereby bolstering its self-portrayal as a proficient arbiter capable of translating prolonged geopolitical disputes into concrete results. Simultaneously, the agreement fostered a measure of political capital with Turkey and Azerbaijan, while possibly creating a constructive, if tentative, impression within the European Union.
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