Will the Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Be the Latest to Come Undone? Aliyev’s Rhetoric of Armenia as ‘West Azerbaijan’ Suggests Peace Is Not His Goal and He Is Playing

Michael Rubin

Middle East Forum

President Donald Trump believes he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. He has engaged in Gaza, Iran, and claimed to have ended a “thousand-year-old dispute” between India and Pakistan, never mind that the partition of India is less than 80 years old. He also claimed peace between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Gaza, however, Hamas continues to refuse to disarm. So, too, does Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Iran Memorandum of Understanding did not last ten days and Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi appears more interested in selling his sovereignty to China, in exchange for an unconstitutional third, than abiding by his commitments to Trump and to rein in the terror groups that sent stability in the region into a free fall.

“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.”

President Donald Trump

Now, it appears the crown jewel of Trump peace-making—the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia—is on the verge of collapse. On August 8, 2025, Trump hosted Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House. The leaders signed a joint declaration that purported to end decades of fighting. “We’ve finally succeeded in making peace,” Trump said. “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.”

Following the ceasefire, Trump co-opted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “corridor” proposal, recasting it as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a U.S.-administered transportation corridor to link Turkey and the Azerbaijani exclave Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan proper through Armenia.

The Trump administration’s conception of the corridor was always flawed for two reasons. First, if Turkey and Azerbaijan would lift their blockade of Armenia, there would be no need for a corridor. Second, Azerbaijan partners with Iran by choice, rather than necessity; in 2022, it launched a corridor across Iranian territory.

While Pashinyan doubles down on the peace agreement with Azerbaijan, arguing that Armenia has no other choice given Azerbaijan’s victory in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, his critics have always raised concerns about Aliyev’s sincerity. Azerbaijani demands increase in proportion to Armenian concessions. Increasingly, these stray into the realm of ridiculousness. Mount Ararat has been the symbol of Armenia since before the Armenian genocide and, on a clear day, it forms the backdrop to Yerevan, yet Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demand and Pashinyan agrees to erase Ararat in Armenian symbolism since it now lies in Turkey.

Aliyev signals that, Pashinyan’s compromises notwithstanding, reconciliation is not on Azerbaijan’s agenda. Speaking on October 2, 2026, at the congress of his political party, Aliyev declared, “It is true that the former leaders of Armenia are war criminals and should bear their punishment, but it was the current Armenian authorities that made territorial demands on us, insulted the dignity of the Azerbaijani people with inappropriate and uncivilized statements. In short, we must never forget about it.”

The greatest impediment to successful peacemaking across administrations is a failure of the White House and the State Department to understand the importance of ideology. Diplomats take comfort in the idea that ordinary grievances lie at the heart of all conflicts. To make peace in such circumstances requires finding the right magic formula of concessions and trade-offs. When ideology governs decision-making, though, economic betterment no longer serves as a motive for agreement. When the ideology involves religion, the State Department is especially blind. Because the United States separates church and state, too many diplomats treat religion as a third rail. Others recognize the importance of faith but internalize a sanitized understanding due to studies at universities like Georgetown University that allow Qatari donations to shape curriculum.

Ignorance of history also matters. When diplomats rotate in and out of files every two or three years, they eventually lose sight of the origins of disputes or past promises. Nine different U.S. ambassadors served in Baku since Aliyev came to power, without even counting the various charges d’affaires, some of whom served as long as formal ambassadors.

Aliyev will use negotiations to extract concessions but then simply walk away from the table to resume his goal of eradicating an entity whose existence he can never accept.

As a result, those managing the South Caucasus file under both the Biden and Trump administrations fail to understand the root causes of conflict and fail also to differentiate between real atrocities—the pogrom in Baku, for example—and largely fake atrocities, such as the so-called Khojaly genocide. They also misunderstand the constitutional issues at the heart of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

What Aliyev’s statements illustrate, however, is that peace is not his goal. Like the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, Aliyev will use negotiations to extract concessions but then simply walk away from the table to resume his goal of eradicating an entity whose existence he can never accept. Indeed, while Trump points to peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia as an example of the art of the deal, Aliyev’s doubling down on the rhetoric of Armenia as West Azerbaijan suggests Aliyev sees Trump not as an ally, but as a fool over whom Aliyev can run roughshod.

If Trump refuses to recognize that his peace is in jeopardy and if Pashinyan continues to govern like a gambler who believes just one more bet can absolve his diplomatic losing streak, then the true legacy of both leaders will be to preside over the end of Christianity in Armenia.