President Donald Trump is hoping to add another peace deal to his accomplishments, this time settling a decadeslong dispute between former Soviet states Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will speak with Trump in Washington, D.C., on Thursday and Friday in a meeting aimed at “promoting peace, prosperity, and economic cooperation in the region.”
It will be an attempt for Trump to make good on his campaign pledge to “restore PEACE between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
The two nations have clashed for decades over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region currently held by Azerbaijan but long occupied by ethnic Armenians who demand it be turned over to Armenian governance.
From 1988 to 1994, the region was ravaged by the First Nagorno-Karabakh War — a military conflict between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijani forces. Over 30,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced. It ended with a ceasefire brokered by Russia, with Armenia in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and swaths of surrounding territory.
Azerbaijan launched the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, taking back the collateral territory lost to Armenia and one-third of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan completed its conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 with another offensive, driving almost all of the remaining ethnic Armenians out of the region. Russia once again stepped in to quell the violence, this time led by President Vladimir Putin.
Both sides have expressed a desire to end the feud. Azerbaijani officials are pressing the Armenian government to amend their constitution, which makes claims to ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Additionally, Pashinyan hopes Trump will be able to negotiate a mutually-satisfying solution to the question of a proposed 20-mile “transit corridor” that would link Azerbaijan with its non-contiguous exclave of Nakhchivan, which is separated by Armenia.
Azerbaijan refuses to allow Armenia control of such a corridor, believing it places too much power over domestic affairs in the hands of a foreign rival. Armenia is against ceding territory for the project or putting control in the hands of a third-party nation for similar reasons.
Trump is outspoken about his accomplishments in brokering international peace agreements, telling reporters last month in Scotland that he has helped avert “six major wars” between his two terms in the Oval Office.
The comments came on the heels of his latest deal to end escalating violence on the border of Cambodia and Thailand.
“We have many ceasefires going on. The whole world is — if I weren’t around right now, you’d have six major wars going on,” he said. “We’ve done a lot. It’s an honor to do it. It’s not hard for me to do it. And I use — not in all cases — but I use a combination of knowing them a little bit or, in some cases, knowing them a lot.… We stopped a lot of wars, and it’s a great honor to have done it.”
Trump seemed to be referencing his successful ceasefire deals struck between India and Pakistan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Israel and Iran. The administration released a post-press pool document that claimed he was also referencing his first-term peace negotiations with Serbia and Kosovo and the Abraham Accords.
Also noted was Trump’s role in talks between Egypt and Ethiopia, which scrimmaged over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the Nile River during his first term. No treaties were signed on the issue, and political hostility remains.
Trump is set to be nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize by multiple world leaders, including officials from Pakistan, Cambodia, and Israel. Nominations begin in September and recipients will be announced in October.
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However, the president has been cynical about the possibility of receiving the award, suspecting that political considerations will compromise his chances.
“No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me,” he said in June.