The AnewZ Opinion section provides a platform for independent voices to share expert perspectives on global and regional issues. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the official position of AnewZ
A year after the Washington agreements, TRIPP is emerging as more than a transport project, reshaping regional connectivity, security calculations and the balance of influence across the South Caucasus.
Article VII of the agreements carries important implications for the security architecture along the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.
First, the provision envisages that security measures along the border should be shaped by mutual agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Second, this approach sharply limits the legal and political space for any new deployment of foreign military forces or observers along the interstate border.
That said, it would be inaccurate to interpret Article VII as an automatic obligation to remove all foreign forces currently present on Armenian territory. Neither Russia’s 102nd Military Base in Gyumri nor the European Union’s monitoring mission in Armenia is specifically targeted by the text. The provision applies directly to the shared border.
Politically, however, Baku may draw a broader conclusion from it. For Azerbaijan, the preferable model of long-term regional stability is one in which security arrangements derive from sovereign agreements between states, rather than reliance on external military actors.
Seen from this perspective, the 8 August agreements also substantially reduce the practical relevance of the 10 November 2020 trilateral statement on regional communications. That document envisaged Russian Federal Security Service border guards overseeing transport links between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan.
TRIPP introduces a fundamentally different model. Armenian sovereignty and jurisdiction remain intact, while the United States emerges as the principal institutional and investment partner in developing the project.
This is therefore not simply a change in terminology for a transport route. A regional security mechanism previously centred on Russia is giving way to a model built more heavily around sovereignty, bilateral agreement and U.S. economic and political involvement.
At its political core, TRIPP is intended to provide an unhindered connection through Armenian territory between mainland Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
The Washington Declaration confirmed that Armenia would work with the United States and mutually agreed third parties to develop the framework for the project. The subsequent Armenia-U.S. implementation framework separately emphasised that the project would operate under Armenia’s full sovereignty, jurisdiction and territorial integrity.
The proposed ownership structure of the TRIPP Development Company also illustrates Washington’s long-term interest. For the initial 49-year period, the U.S. side is expected to hold a 74 per cent stake, with Armenia retaining 26 per cent.
This structure gives the United States a controlling corporate stake in the project, but it does not amount to a transfer of Armenian territorial sovereignty. Border control, customs, taxation and security authority remain under Armenian jurisdiction.
The initial $201 million financing framework for the TRIPP+ Enterprise Fund, associated with the U.S. State Department, also suggests that Washington sees the project as more than a road-building exercise. It is being conceived as a broader platform for infrastructure, energy, logistics and private-sector investment.
In that sense, TRIPP’s geoeconomic value extends well beyond railways and highways. It could eventually provide a platform for energy infrastructure, digital connectivity and regional production chains.
For Azerbaijan, the central consequence is clear. The connectivity concept discussed since 2020 under the term “Zangezur Corridor” is no longer merely a political demand or a source of regional dispute. A legal and investment mechanism involving the United States elevates the route into an international project.
Azerbaijan’s substantial progress on infrastructure within its own territory has already created much of the physical foundation on the eastern side of that route.
For Washington, TRIPP formalises a new connectivity link between the South Caucasus and Central Asia. At the same time, the project creates a new geoeconomic route that could reduce Russia’s traditional transit advantages and Iran’s role in alternative north-south connections.
It would be an oversimplification to describe the U.S. objective solely as an attempt to “exclude” Moscow and Tehran. Yet the practical effect of creating a route that bypasses both Russia and Iran clearly aligns with Washington’s broader interest in regional diversification.
Baku is not opposed in principle to the economic participation of regional states in TRIPP. Its principal concern is that the route should not become an instrument of military or political control for an outside power.
A model involving U.S. investment and management while remaining under Armenian sovereign jurisdiction represents a compromise between those competing requirements.
One of TRIPP’s more intriguing dimensions is that U.S.-China competition has not translated into open confrontation over the project.
Since the 8 August agreements, Beijing has not mounted an overt political campaign against TRIPP. That does not imply a negotiated understanding between Washington and Beijing. It does, however, suggest that expansion of the Middle Corridor can generate benefits for both sides.
For China, diversification of access to European markets fits the broader logic of the Belt and Road Initiative. An additional connection through the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Türkiye does not inherently conflict with Beijing’s objective of expanding and diversifying transport routes.
For the United States, meanwhile, the Middle Corridor offers an opportunity to reduce Central Asia’s dependence on Russian transport networks while deepening Washington’s own economic engagement with the region.
The motivations are different, but at certain points the outcomes may overlap.
Washington seeks to reduce Russia’s dominant transit role. Beijing wants to make its commercial routes more resilient to geopolitical risk. TRIPP could therefore become a piece of physical infrastructure in which two competing powers find limited areas of converging interest.
India must also be considered within this wider picture. New Delhi’s expanding defence relationship with Armenia, including arms exports to Yerevan, means the South Caucasus cannot be completely isolated from wider strategic competition in Asia.
Yet it would be too simplistic to interpret Armenia-India cooperation solely as an anti-China manoeuvre. A more convincing reading is that India’s growing regional engagement forms part of a wider connectivity strategy linking Russia, Iran, Armenia and Europe, with competition with China providing an additional layer of context.
TRIPP should therefore not be described as an example of U.S.-China cooperation. It is better understood as a project where interests may intersect in limited ways despite broader strategic rivalry.
For Azerbaijan, that distinction is valuable. The route can attract economic interest from several major powers without requiring its security architecture to fall under the monopoly of any one external actor.
The year since 8 August 2025 suggests that the Washington agreements were not an isolated diplomatic episode. They marked the beginning of a broader strategic trajectory in Azerbaijan-U.S. relations.
On 22 January 2026, President Ilham Aliyev met Donald Trump in Davos. Their discussions included bilateral relations, Azerbaijan-Armenia normalisation, regional connectivity and the TRIPP project.
On 10 February, during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Baku, Azerbaijan and the United States signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. The document placed regional connectivity, economic investment and security cooperation among the central pillars of bilateral relations. In effect, it moved the Strategic Working Group established on 8 August 2025 towards a more institutionalised stage.
Aliyev’s participation in the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington on 19 February further demonstrated that the Baku-Washington political dialogue was moving beyond a purely regional framework.
It would be misleading to describe the body as an alternative to the United Nations. Azerbaijan’s invitation as one of its founding participants nevertheless indicated that Baku was becoming an increasingly visible partner in new U.S.-led diplomatic initiatives.
The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran in February 2026 created a new risk environment for the South Caucasus. During the crisis, Azerbaijan publicly stated that it would not allow its territory or airspace to be used for military operations against Iran.
That position reflected Baku’s attempt both to limit escalation along its border with Iran and to protect regional connectivity projects - including Nakhchivan and the future TRIPP route - from becoming entangled in a wider military confrontation.
Drone attacks launched from Iranian territory against Nakhchivan in March demonstrated that this risk was not theoretical. Even so, Baku maintained its strategic line: a firm position on sovereignty and territorial security, combined with the preservation of regional diplomatic channels.
Long-term projects such as TRIPP require precisely that kind of stability.
In Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party retained its parliamentary majority in the 7 June election. The result provided an important indication of political continuity for Yerevan’s rapprochement with the West and its normalisation process with Azerbaijan.
It does not mean that Moscow’s traditional levers of influence inside Armenia have disappeared. But it increases the likelihood that the political course supporting TRIPP and the Washington framework will remain intact in the near term.
This also makes the Türkiye factor increasingly important.
The renewed dialogue in U.S.-Türkiye relations, the strategic alliance between Ankara and Baku, and TRIPP’s prospective connection towards Türkiye through Nakhchivan could create an additional platform for trilateral Azerbaijan-Türkiye-U.S. cooperation.
Whether that format eventually becomes institutionalised remains an open question. The geopolitical logic behind it, however, is already taking shape.
One year after the 8 August agreements, several conclusions can be drawn.
First, TRIPP is not merely a technical addition to Azerbaijan-Armenia normalisation. It is a mechanism that links the durability of peace to concrete economic interests. The more valuable and functional the route becomes, the greater the economic cost of disrupting the peace that sustains it.
Second, the project changes the concept of a regional security guarantor. Unlike the Russia-centred communications model envisaged in 2020, the emerging framework rests on Armenian sovereignty, mutual arrangements with Azerbaijan and long-term U.S. economic involvement.
Third, TRIPP strengthens the geopolitical weight of the Middle Corridor. Azerbaijan is becoming more than a transit country on an east-west trade route. It is increasingly positioned as one of the central nodes in a connectivity architecture linking the Caspian basin, Central Asia, Türkiye and Europe.
Fourth, the project creates a paradox among the major powers. The United States, China, Türkiye and Europe may all find reasons to support or benefit from the same route, albeit for very different strategic purposes. Russia and Iran, meanwhile, face the prospect of their traditional transit and security roles being diminished.
TRIPP could therefore become both a platform for cooperation and a new arena for competition.
The most important conclusion is broader still.
The geopolitical significance of the 8 August agreements is not confined to opening a road. TRIPP is becoming a mechanism capable of reshaping who invests, who serves as a transit hub, who emerges as a security partner and who finds itself increasingly outside the region’s new connectivity architecture.
For Azerbaijan, the strategic objective is equally clear: expand connectivity without dividing sovereignty; benefit from the economic interests of major powers without allowing security control to become the monopoly of an external actor.
That is the equation the Washington agreements - and TRIPP itself - may ultimately help solve.
For centuries, Lahore has been shaped by the people, cultures and empires that passed through it. Now, the Pakistani city is preparing to put that ...
A U.S. campaign to throttle Iran...
The resolution, sponsored by African countries and led by Togo, passed by 164 votes to one, with six abstention...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he thinks there is a chance of a peace being reached with Ukraine. He told the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia that he believed there was "a chance of finding a solution," to the conflict.
The Iranian Health Ministry said at least 18 people were killed and 142 others injured in U.S. airstrikes carried out between 30 August and 2 September.
U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will visit Russia then Ukraine over the weekend, Russian state news agency TASS has reported, citing an unnamed source. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also said American envoys will visit the capitals of both countries.
The Iranian Army has again struck at U.S. bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in retaliation for U.S. attacks on southern and western parts of Iran late on Tuesday, which reportedly killed 18 people and injured more than 100 others.
U.S. efforts to squeeze Iran’s economy through an oil blockade and sanctions are becoming increasingly difficult for Tehran to withstand, according to three senior Iranian sources. Washington is escalating pressure in hopes of securing concessions in future negotiations.
“Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” has drawn large audiences in Chinese cinemas, and for good reason.
When the South Korean container ship PanStar Acro left Busan for Europe through the Arctic in August, its voyage seemed far removed from the war between the United States, Israel and Iran. In reality, the two developments are increasingly connected.
On 1 September 2026, the Non-Aligned Movement marked the 65th anniversary of its first conference. Belgrade once again hosted a high-level commemorative gathering at the movement's birthplace.
Something unusual is happening across societies otherwise separated by geography, political culture, economic development and historical experience.
In late April, Mali faced one of its most serious coordinated assaults in years.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment