Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attend a plenary session in the outreach/BRICS Plus format at the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 24, 2024.
Maxim Shemetov / POOL / AFP
The peace deal will mark the culmination of extensive U.S. mediation efforts.
U.S. President Donald Trump is hosting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the White House on Friday, August 8th, for what he has declared a “Historic Peace Summit.”
The two leaders are expected to sign a long-awaited peace agreement that could end decades of hostilities between their nations.
“Many Leaders have tried to end the War, with no success, until now, thanks to ‘TRUMP,’” the U.S. president posted on Thursday on his Truth Social account.
Trump said there would be an official “Peace Signing Ceremony” and added that Washington would also sign separate bilateral agreements with Armenia and Azerbaijan “to pursue Economic opportunities together, so we can fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus Region.”
The peace deal is set to mark the culmination of extensive U.S. mediation efforts, including talks in the United Arab Emirates and visits by Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
One significant economic component was unveiled on Thursday when Witkoff and President Aliyev oversaw the signing of a cooperation memorandum between ExxonMobil and Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR.
According to U.S. officials familiar with the negotiations, the agreement includes a breakthrough on a long-contentious issue: the creation of a transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan’s mainland to its Nakhchivan exclave.
The corridor—cutting across a 32-kilometre stretch of Armenian territory—is expected to include railway lines, oil and gas pipelines, and fiber optic infrastructure. It will be developed by private firms, while the U.S. will hold leasing rights and reportedly name the route the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”
The corridor has long been a sticking point. Azerbaijan insisted on having a land bridge to Nakhchivan without relying on Armenian control, while Armenia viewed foreign oversight as a threat to its sovereignty. Details of how this impasse was resolved remain unclear.
Another unresolved issue is Azerbaijan’s demand for Armenia to amend its constitution, which still references Nagorno-Karabakh. It remains unknown whether Prime Minister Pashinyan has agreed to this condition, especially amid domestic protests over any such change.
The two countries fought wars in the 1990s and again in 2020 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. In 2023, Azerbaijan launched a swift military campaign to retake full control of the region, triggering the exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians.
For years, Russia played the role of mediator in the region, hosting both leaders in Moscow and deploying peacekeepers under a 2020 ceasefire. However, since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus has diminished sharply.
Armenia has since moved to distance itself from Moscow and pursue closer ties with the West, including advancing toward European Union membership.
The deal being finalized in Washington also opens the door for normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey. Diplomatic ties between the two neighbours have been frozen since the early 1990s, but Armenia has signaled a willingness to reopen its border with Turkey and engage in direct trade and infrastructure cooperation.
If signed, the agreement would represent a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration which has been striving to bring peace to areas in conflict.
Zoltán Kottász is a journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Budapest. He worked for many years as a journalist and as the editor of the foreign desk at the Hungarian daily, Magyar Nemzet. He focuses primarily on European politics.
