President Donald Trump vowed ahead of the 2024 election, “I will protect persecuted Christians, I will work to stop the violence and ethnic cleansing, and we will restore PEACE between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
The president’s promise of peace seemed an unlikely goal. After all, others before him had tried and failed to bring an end to the bitter conflict between the two nations over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the Caucasus Mountains that was alternatively known until recently as the Republic of Artsakh.
A former Obama Pentagon official … suggested in a December op-ed that Trump ‘will have earned the right to a Nobel Peace Prize’ if he ends the conflict between these two nations.
That region became autonomous in 1923 while Armenia, the world’s oldest Christian country, and Azerbaijan, whose population is 97.3% Muslim, were both still members of the former Soviet Union.
Despite two bloody wars fought over the territory — the first in 1988 and the second in 2020 — Nagorno-Karabakh remained home to over 100,000 Armenian Christians, ever defiant of Azerbaijan’s territorial claims.
However, in September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a blitzkrieg on Nagorno-Karabakh with the help of Israeli and Turkish weaponry, killing hundreds of people, destroying churches, and forcing the Christian population to flee, in many cases on foot.
Trump noted on Thursday — months after a White House special envoy’s visit to the Azerbaijani capital, which boosted binational talk of a draft peace agreement — that he would host President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia for “a Historic Peace Summit.”
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (left); President Donald Trump (center); Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (right). Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN,ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
“These two Nations have been at War for many years, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people. Many Leaders have tried to end the War, with no success, until now, thanks to ‘TRUMP,'” the president wrote on Truth Social. “My Administration has been engaged with both sides for quite some time. Tomorrow, President Aliyev AND Prime Minister Pashinyan will join me at the White House for an official Peace Signing Ceremony.”
Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Pentagon official who now serves as executive director of the McCain Institute, suggested in a December op-ed that Trump “will have earned the right to a Nobel Peace Prize” if he ends the conflict between these two nations.
‘The two neighbors have been in conflict for decades — over 35 years — with countless lives lost and generations scarred.’
Farkas suggested further that Trump was well-positioned to close the deal, writing, “Trump can leverage his prior business relationships and credibility in Baku and Aliyev’s desire to curry his favor to get U.S. economic investments and access and to restart U.S. military assistance.”
In addition to overseeing the signing of a peace accord, Trump — who has also brokered peaceful resolutions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia and Thailand, and India and Pakistan — indicated on Thursday that he would sign bilateral agreements with both countries “to pursue economic opportunities together, so we can fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus Region.”
On a call with reporters on Friday, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly stated, “The two neighbors have been in conflict for decades — over 35 years — with countless lives lost and generations scarred. While many have tried, including Joe Biden, only President Trump, the peacemaker in chief, was able to successfully bring Armenia and Azerbaijan together to agree to a historic peace.”
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Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
A senior administration official noted on the call that a top Armenian official expressed disbelief after walking out of the negotiating room yesterday.
“He said, ‘I can’t believe tomorrow is going to happen — not for my sake, but my grandkids will be the first kids to grow up in this area who won’t have to fight their grandfather’s war.'”
Armenia has apparently agreed to permit a 27-mile corridor through its territory — the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity — linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave on the Turkish border, thereby enabling persons and goods to transit between Turkey and Azerbaijan without having to pass through neighboring Iran or Russia.
‘Tomorrow is the handshake in writing the check.’
Armenia also agreed to grant the U.S. exclusive special development rights for 99 years along this route, which is known as the Zangezur Corridor.
To sweeten the deal for Azerbaijan, the U.S. will lift restrictions on defense cooperation with the Islamic country by waiving a section of a 1992 law that prohibits assistance and other benefits to Baku “until the President reports to the Congress that such government is taking steps to cease all blockades and uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“By locking in this path to peace, we are unlocking the great potential of the South Caucasus region in trade, transit, and energy flows,” Kelly said.
Another official on the call indicated that this joint declaration is the first-ever bilateral declaration signed by Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The official noted, “Tomorrow is the handshake in writing the check, and we still have to ink the contract and cash the check.”
While a “historic peace” between Azerbaijan and Armenia is imminent, not all are pleased with the terms of the deal.
Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, blasted the deal, suggesting that Trump was retroactively sanctioning genocide.
“The same Donald Trump who failed to stop Azerbaijan’s 2020 attack on Nagorno Karabakh is now rewarding this very aggression — further compromising Armenia’s security and sovereignty and, in the process, abetting Azerbaijan’s normalization and formalization of its ethnic cleansing, its genocide, of more than 150,000 indigenous Armenian Christians,” Hamparian said.
The ANCA complained further that there appears to be no provisions in the deal for the return of forcibly displaced Armenians to Artsakh or a “meaningful rollback” of the Azerbaijani military presence inside Armenian territory.
“Real peace cannot be built on the forced displacement of a people, the abandonment of hostages, or the rollback of sovereignty,” Hamparian continued. “You can’t declare peace while ignoring the ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Armenians and the illegal imprisonment of their democratically elected leaders. That’s not peace — it’s impunity, an invitation to renewed aggression.”
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