The White House could potentially host the announcement of a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with both national leaders visiting the U.S. from Thursday, August 7th.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are scheduled to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday.
Pashinyan’s office describes the forthcoming bilateral meeting with Trump—and a subsequent trilateral meeting between him, Aliyev, and Trump—as “aiming to advance peace, prosperity and economic cooperation in the region.”
While tensions over the historically disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh appear to have subsided, a land corridor linking Azerbaijan to its landlocked autonomous enclave Nakhchivan remains contentious. At the time of writing, the formal agenda of the Washington meeting has yet to be announced, but much of the diplomatic laking and briefing points in the direction of a ‘peace’ announcement.
Trump will welcome the opportunity to act as a dealmaker at this, the third official meeting between the two leaders this year (following earlier talks in Tirana and Abu Dhabi). To date, peace in Ukraine has eluded him, although Trump has claimed success in ending other recent conflicts through the threat of economic sanctions (e.g. tariffs) when facing down, say, India and Pakistan. In July, Trump claimed that the U.S. had “worked magic” in the peace talks between the two nations:
It’s pretty close if it’s not already done.
