Trump, Rubio mark TRIPP summit anniversary

By Nicholas Castillo

United States policymakers marked the one-year anniversary of the trilateral summit between President Donald Trump, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, over the weekend.

President Trump held phone calls with both Aliyev and Pashinyan. The Armenian readout of the call stated that Trump and Pashinyan discussed the implementation of TRIPP and that “real peace” had been achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani document was broader, reporting that Aliyev and Trump had discussed Azerbaijan-Armenia trade and an enhanced Washington-Baku relationship. 

Additionally, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a statement on the U.S. role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process on Saturday, describing the August 2025 summit as a “historic breakthrough.” 

“One year ago today, President Trump secured peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Rubio wrote. “Peace has opened the door to enhanced relationships between the United States, Armenia, and Azerbaijan that will add to the economic prosperity of all three countries.”

Rubio’s statement underscored the importance of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), the Washington-backed corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan through Armenia’s Syunik province. TRIPP’s announcement had been one of the central elements of the August 2025 summit.

“Today, I am pleased to announce that the Trans-Caspian Enterprise Fund is up and running, led by a newly elected board of directors and capitalized with $201 million in U.S. government funding to spur private sector investment across the Trans-Caspian Trade Route (Middle Corridor) in the South Caucasus and Central Asia,” Rubio’s statement continued.

“This progress reflects a simple truth: peace and prosperity reinforce one another,” Rubio concluded. 

Pashinyan and Aliyev also spoke by phone on August 8, with both sides describing the conversation as focused on progress in the normalization process and the implementation of agreements reached at the Washington summit. 

Despite official insistence that the Washington Summit secured peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the summit only featured a symbolic "initialling" of the peace treaty’s text by Aliyev and Pashinyan. Baku has insisted Armenia modify its constitution to remove references to its conflict-era declaration of independence before he will agree to sign the document. 

Other aspects of the peace and normalization process have also stalled in recent years, such as border delimitation, which has not seen meaningful progress since a single case in spring 2024, when Armenia gave territory it held around the northeastern town of Kirants to Azerbaijan. 

The TRIPP initiative differs from what Baku has long called the “Zangezur Corridor,” although both envision a transit connection between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan through Armenia’s Syunik province. Azerbaijan had long demanded the establishment of such a corridor as part of any normalization agreement with Armenia, with some fearing that claims to the corridor could serve as a precondition for further offensives into Armenia’s internationally recognized territory. 

Trump’s involvement in the normalization process marked the most direct involvement by a third-party arbiter in Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, which had largely been a bilateral process since 2023.

Washington’s increased attention to the Caucasus has additionally materialized in the form of high-level visits, such as Vice President JD Vance’s trips to Armenia and Azerbaijan in February, and new agreements on energy and security cooperation.

Meanwhile, trade and transit links between Armenia and Azerbaijan have begun to expand. On Saturday’s anniversary, a new shipment of more than 1,000 tons of wheat and 700 tons of coal was transported from Russia to Armenia via Azerbaijan. The shipment adds to a growing volume of goods, including grain, timber, diesel, and gasoline, that have moved along the route since November 2025.