Onnik James Krikorian
The U.S.-brokered Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), which would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia, has accelerated Armenia–Azerbaijan normalization but triggered domestic backlash in Armenia and concern from Iran and Russia.
TRIPP sovereignty concerns and uncertainty over implementation threaten Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s domestic political standing, with parliamentary elections set for June 2026.Pashinyan continues to assert that the U.S.-managed TRIPP preserves full Armenian sovereignty, though border arrangements remain unclear following a public dispute with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev about the route’s semantics during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
Armenian skepticism about the TRIPP is high, as some fear that a route to Nakhchivan could allow Azerbaijan or Russia to control Armenia’s strategic border with Iran or provide a pretext for further Azerbaijani aggression.
Following the August 8 summit between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at the White House, momentum toward normalizing relations between Baku and Yerevan continues (see EDM, August 13). Despite some media reports suggesting that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan established peace during the meeting, the leaders only signed a seven-point declaration, confirming their intention to pursue peace. The Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers initialed the prospective peace treaty, the 17-point Agreement On the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan, which the two states finalized in March, committing to work toward formalizing the text (see EDM, March 24, August 12).
The progress made during the August 8 summit was enough for the leaders, especially Pashinyan, to trumpet that peace has been effectively established (Civil Net, August 28). Formal peace, however, remains contingent on Yerevan changing its constitution to remove what Azerbaijan and Türkiye perceive as territorial claims against them—Pashinyan says he will hold a referendum on constitutional reforms soon after the June 2026 parliamentary elections (see EDM, June 25; Azatutyun, September 22).
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