The corridor everyone wants

President Trump’s highly-anticipated announcement yesterday (Monday) ended up featuring: a) an EU-financed plan to keep sending Ukraine the US arms Kyiv needs to defend itself, plus b) a 50-day deadline for Putin to make peace or face secondary sanctions (ie, hitting China and India with mass tariffs if they buy Putin’s oil).

But Trump made another comment that caught our eye: during a quick victory lap around conflicts his administration has helped settle (DRC-Rwanda, India-Pakistan, and a possible Egypt-Ethiopia deal on Nile water flows), the US president mentioned this:

• “We just seem to have Armenia and Azerbaijan. It looks like that’s going to come to a conclusion, a successful conclusion.”

The headlines mostly skipped this snippet, or ran with ‘no breakthrough’, but there’ve been consistent rumours something’s happening, and it involves us all. So let’s dive in.

First, your quick refresh:

• After wars and skirmishes dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan mounted a lightning offensive in 2023 to seize Nagorno-Karabakh, long run by ethnic Armenians but internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan

• 100,000 locals (99% of the enclave’s population) fled for fear of ethnic cleansing

So Azerbaijan got the upper hand in that part of their feud.

But there’s still one more big piece to the puzzle before these two rivals sign the peace deal they broadly agreed back in March: the Zangezur Corridor.

Armenia doesn’t like that terminology, because it refers to a 32-km path running through Armenia’s own land. But Azerbaijan and its friends in Turkey have been pushing the idea:

• Azerbaijan wants unimpeded corridor access so it can connect to its own little territory beyond Armenia, called the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic

• And Turkey likes the idea, because that ‘corridor’ would also link to Turkey, boxing out rivals like Iran and Russia while uniting what it sees as the entire Turkic world (Turkey, Azerbaijan, and several of the ‘Stans speak Turkic languages).

But of course, Armenia feels uneasy watching its bigger neighbours casually discuss a chunk of its own land like it’s a ‘corridor’ to the lunch room down at the local DMV.

And other powers are weighing in too:

• Iran is in no shape to be calling the shots here, but it’s objected to what it sees as a rival Azerbaijani-Turkish attempt to cut Iran’s access to Europe

• Russia has previously supported the idea, but only if Russian border guards are manning it (something nobody in the region really welcomes at this point), and

• China also likes the idea, given it could link Beijing’s Belt & Road infrastructure to new ports on the Black Sea without a Moscow middle-man (though initial reports of China offering to build corridor infrastructure have mysteriously disappeared)

But you might’ve noticed one big player missing from that crowded chessboard: the US.

And that’s where things get intriguing: after Steve Witkoff’s surprise Baku appearance in March, top US envoy to Turkey, Tom Barrack, weighed in on Friday:

• "They are arguing over 32 kilometers of road... So what happens is that America steps in and says 'Okay, we’ll take it over. Give us the 32 kilometers of road on a hundred-year lease, and you can all share it’". 

It’s the first official confirmation that the US is open to an idea that’s long been in the rumour mill, building on earlier proposals from Turkey and the EU: US logistics (and possibly security) contractors managing the corridor and sharing the data with all parties.

Word is both Armenia and Azerbaijan are open to it, and while Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran will of course dislike any US presence in the region, it’s not really their call.

So, what next? This is far from a done deal.

The leaders of Armenia (Pashinyan) and Azerbaijan (Aliyev) just met in the UAE, and are due to meet in Dubai again later this month. And any pact will involve tough concessions for Armenia’s leader, who’s already facing protests over concessions ahead of elections next year. But he might see this corridor as a price he’s willing to pay for a final peace deal.