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‘Stop All Fighting Forever’: Trump Secures Major Peace Deal Between Armenia, Azerbaijan

President Donald Trump oversaw the signing of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Friday, securing a deal that was unsuccessfully sought by the European Union, Russia, and the Biden administration.

Trump met with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev privately in the Oval Office before they all appeared for a press conference and signed the peace declaration.

“The countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan are committing to stop all fighting forever, open up commerce, travel, and diplomatic relations and respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Trump said.

The deal promises peace between majority-Christian Armenia and majority-Muslim Azerbaijan after the two nations have fought since the early 1990s. Under the deal, Armenia will grant the United States the rights to develop a transit corridor through the South Caucasus that will be named after President Trump. The trade corridor would be in a strategic location as the South Caucasus acts as the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Trump said the United States is also signing a bilateral agreement with both Armenia and Azerbaijan “to expand cooperation in energy, trade, and technology, including AI.” The president also ended U.S. restrictions on foreign aid and defense cooperation with Azerbaijan that had been in place since 1992.

President Aliyev said that the deal means that Azerbaijan is “writing a new history in the bilateral and interstate relationship” with the United States.

“To be in a strategic partnership with the greatest country in the world is a great opportunity, and also a very big responsibility,” he said, adding, “President Trump brings peace to the Southern Caucasus, and we’re grateful for that.”

Prime Minister Pashinyan of Armenia said the peace deal “will pave the way to ending decades of conflict between our countries and open a new era based on the full respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other.” He told Trump that “today’s great achievement is yet another testimony to your global leadership and your legacy as a statesman and a peacemaker on the world stage.”

By bringing Armenia and Azerbaijan together, President Trump ratchets up another victory in the foreign policy column. In just the past few weeks, Trump’s negotiations have been instrumental in peace agreements between Pakistan and India and Cambodia and Thailand, as well as a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran. Trump also hopes to achieve a massive deal between Russia and Ukraine to end the more than three years of fighting in the coming weeks.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has centered on a 1,700-square-mile mountainous region called Nagorno-Karabakh that has been inhabited by Armenians for thousands of years but is inside Azerbaijan’s borders. In recent years, the conflict escalated when Azerbaijan set up a military blockade around Nagorno-Karabakh, cutting off food, electricity, and water for the Armenians living in the region. Azerbaijan then launched a full-scale military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, effectively engaging in an ethnic cleansing campaign as Armenians fled the region to seek refuge outside of the area they used to call home.

Azerbaijan argued that Armenia was “illegally stationing” over 10,000 troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and defended its actions in the region as “anti-terrorist.”

Armenians, who represent the oldest Christian nation in the world, have been targeted in the past. During World War I, around 1.5 million Armenians were murdered at the hands of Muslim Turks, who sought to purge Armenians from Turkey, mainly through forced death marches. The Armenian genocide is commemorated every year, but Turkey and Azerbaijan continue to deny that it ever took place.

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