The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a joint declaration at the White House on Friday that would edge their long and frequently bloody conflict closer to resolution — and give President Trump an unusual form of recognition in the process.
Mr. Trump hosted Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan at the White House on Friday afternoon, where they signed the first such commitment toward a peace deal in decades of conflict.
A key part of the breakthrough, the official added, was an announcement from Armenia giving the United States exclusive development rights to a transit corridor through its territory, connecting Azerbaijan, which sits east of Armenia, to Nakhichevan, a noncontiguous enclave to Armenia’s west that borders Turkey.
The 27-mile corridor will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, and run along Armenia’s southern border with Iran.
At the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump described the naming of the route as a “great honor for me.”
Mr. Pashinyan called the joint declaration a “game-changing outcome,” heralding a new chapter “of peace, prosperity, security and economic cooperation in the South Caucasus.” He cited the “blessed are the peacemakers” passage of the Bible as he praised Mr. Trump for mediating the deal.
Mr. Aliyev also credited Mr. Trump for bringing the decades-long conflict with Armenia closer to an end.
“If not for President Trump and his team,” he said, “probably today Armenia and Azerbaijan would have been again in this endless process of negotiations.”
Both men said they would endorse Mr. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Thirty-five years of death and hatred, and now it’s going to be love and success together,” Mr. Trump said.
For a president who ran on an “America First” agenda eschewing United States involvement abroad, Mr. Trump has shown an eagerness to cast himself as a global peacemaker, even as the conflicts he has promised to end — in Ukraine and Gaza — are still boiling.
In open pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Trump has involved himself in peace negotiations between Cambodia and Thailand; the military conflict between Israel and Iran; and tensions between India and Pakistan. The United States has also been involved in a temporary peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I’ve stopped six wars,” Mr. Trump said last month in Turnberry, Scotland. “I’m averaging about a war a month.”
The latest agreement comes after months of shuttle diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan, capped off with a series of more recent face-to-face sessions between Mr. Pashinyan and Mr. Aliyev, including gatherings at the Kremlin and in Abu Dhabi.
While not a peace deal, the joint declaration is the first formal, signed commitment aimed at permanently ending the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, apart from various cease-fire agreements following periods of the conflict that broke into all-out war. The region has been embroiled in conflict since the two countries declared their independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
But there are still many potential hurdles between it and its goal of producing a lasting, durable peace.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have had closed borders since the late 1980s, when they began fighting over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region within Azerbaijan’s borders that had, until recently, been populated with ethnic Armenians. In 1993, Turkey also closed its border with Armenia in solidarity with Baku.
The long-running conflict between the Turkic Muslims of Azerbaijan and the Christian Armenians was punctuated by charges of ethnic cleansing on both sides, the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, and the deaths of tens of thousands over almost four decades.
According the White House, the deal does not resolve the two countries’ competing claims to sovereignty over key regions or delineate the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan, one of the fundamental issues underpinning their long-running standoff. It also does not address lingering human rights claims resulting from Azerbaijan’s 2023 takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan has insisted that Armenia must amend its constitution to wipe out any claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. While Armenia’s constitution does not directly reference Nagorno-Karabakh, its preamble cites the country’s Declaration of Independence, which refers to the “reunification” of the territory with Armenia.
Still, Mr. Aliyev has said in the past that without such a change, a peace agreement is not possible.
Armenia has been agitating for Azerbaijan to release political prisoners and guarantee that the roughly 150,000 ethnically Armenian residents expelled during the takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh can return to their homes.
Both countries have raised claims against each other in competing cases before the International Court of Justice. It is not clear if those appeals will be withdrawn once the joint declaration committing to a peace agreement is signed. Upon signing, however, Armenia and Azerbaijan will withdraw from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, a mediation format led by Russia, France and the United States that has been trying since 1997 to resolve the conflict, without success.
The creation of the transit corridor named for Mr. Trump is expected to bring its own set of challenges. Already, there have been warnings of a backlash from Tehran, which sees the introduction of an exclusive U.S. economic development zone along its border as a potential threat.
Earlier this week, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote on social media that the creation of such a corridor would prompt “a firm response from Iran.”
For Azerbaijan, the corridor is a critical overland link between Baku and Turkey; for Armenia, agreeing to it — and striking a peace deal with Azerbaijan — could be critical steps toward normalizing relations with Turkey, the subject of continuing negotiations.
But Armenians in the diaspora have raised concerns that even if Yerevan retains legal authority over the corridor, Azerbaijan could try to use its guaranteed unfettered economic access to try to expand its footprint in the area, and challenge Armenia’s sovereignty.
“What we’re seeing is an agreement rewarding Azerbaijan’s aggression, undermining Armenia’s sovereignty and denying justice to the 150,000 Armenians forced from their homes,” said Alex Galitsky, the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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