Azerbaijan and Armenia sign agreement at the White House

As the two extended their arms in front of Mr Trump to shake hands, the US leader reached up and clasped his hands around theirs.

The two countries in the South Caucasus signed agreements with each other and the US that will reopen key transportation routes while allowing the US to seize on Russia’s declining influence in the region.

The deal includes an agreement that will create a major transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the White House said.

Mr Trump said at the White House on Friday that naming the route after him was “a great honour for me” but “I didn’t ask for this”.

A senior administration official, on a call before the event with reporters, said it was the Armenians who suggested the name.

Mr Trump has sought to be known as a peacemaker and made no secret of the fact that he covets a Nobel Peace Prize.

Friday’s signing adds to a series of peace and economic agreements brokered by the US this year.

Both leaders said the breakthrough was made possible by Mr Trump and his team.

“We are laying a foundation to write a better story than the one we had in the past,” Mr Pashinyan said, calling the agreement a “significant milestone”.

“President Trump in six months did a miracle,” Mr Aliyev said.

Mr Trump remarked on how long the conflict went on between the two countries.

“Thirty-five years they fought, and now they’re friends and they’re going to be friends a long time,” he said.

That route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 20-mile-wide patch of Armenian territory.

The demand from Azerbaijan had held up peace talks in the past.

For Azerbaijan, a major producer of oil and gas, the route also provides a more direct link to Turkey and onward to Europe.

Mr Trump indicated he would like to visit the route, saying, “We’re going to have to get over there.”

Asked how he feels about lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Mr Trump said “very confident.”

Mr Aliyev and Mr Pashinyan on Friday joined a growing list of foreign leaders and other officials who have said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping ease long-running conflicts across the globe.

The peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda helped end the decades-long conflict in eastern Congo, and the US mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, while Mr Trump intervened in clashes between Cambodia and Thailand by threatening to withhold trade agreements with both countries if their fighting continued.

Yet peace deals in Gaza and Ukraine have been elusive.

The signing of a deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, also strikes a geopolitical blow to their former imperial master, Russia.

Throughout the nearly four-decade conflict, Moscow played mediator to expand its clout in the strategic South Caucasus region, but its influence waned quickly after it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Trump-brokered deal would allow the US to deepen its reach in the region as Moscow retreats, senior US administration officials said.

The Trump administration began engaging with Armenia and Azerbaijan in earnest earlier this year, when Mr Trump’s key diplomatic envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Mr Aliyev in Baku and started to discuss what a senior administration official called a “regional reset”.

Negotiations over who will develop the Trump Route, which will eventually include a rail line, oil and gas pipelines, and fibre optic lines, will likely begin next week, and at least nine developers have expressed interest already, according to the senior administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Separate from the joint agreement, both Armenia and Azerbaijan signed deals with the United States meant to bolster cooperation in energy, technology and the economy, the White House said.