Does a Trump-brokered deal squeeze Russia, Iran out of the South Caucasus?

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, his precocious begetter and predecessor Heydar Aliyev and immoderate of their closest governmental allies hail from Nakhchivan.

The sanction of this tiny, mountainous and underdeveloped Azeri country sandwiched betwixt Armenia, Iran and Turkiye sounds unfamiliar to those extracurricular the strategical South Caucasus region.

But Nakhchivan’s sanction and geopolitical value resurfaced aft United States President Donald Trump hosted a White House acme betwixt Azeri and Armenian leaders connected Friday.

Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a preliminary bid woody to extremity the decades-long struggle implicit Nagorno-Karabakh.

In the aboriginal 1990s, taste Armenians successful the Nagorno-Karabakh portion broke distant from oil-rich Azerbaijan aft a warfare that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Moscow brokered a truce successful 1994, maintaining 2 subject bases successful resource-poor Armenia, supplying it with inexpensive vigor portion selling arms to Azerbaijan.

Even though the struggle did not impact Nakhchivan, it chopped disconnected the Zangezur Corridor, a 40km (25-mile) logistical umbilical cord to Azeri mainland that consists of a derelict roadworthy and parallel rusty obstruction tracks.

Air question and hours-long, bumpy transit done Iran remained the lone mode to scope the exclave, whose authorities ruled it similar a idiosyncratic fiefdom, with laws and ways of beingness often contradicting those of the mainland.

After winning the 2020 warfare implicit Nagorno-Karabakh and restoring power implicit it 3 years later, Baku has been anxious to revive the corridor, demanding its exterritoriality and adjacent pondering the usage of subject force.

‘A caller world successful the region’

The reasons spell acold beyond restoring entree to Aliyev’s ancestral land. The corridor could go a mammoth transport hub betwixt Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

It whitethorn summation the travel of Central Asian hydrocarbons to Turkiye and further to Europe, boost the determination system – and upend Russia’s 2 centuries of domination successful the portion that besides includes Georgia.

Armenia was reluctant to let Azeri entree to the corridor, fearing that the emboldened Turkish-Azeri tandem whitethorn jeopardise its security.

But Trump chopped done the Gordian knot connected Friday, and his relation “essentially, cements a caller world successful the region”, according to Emil Mustafayev, the Baku-based main exertion of the Minval Politika online magazine.

“This is simply a superior displacement successful the information architecture and transport logistics of the South Caucasus,” helium told Al Jazeera.

While successful the White House, Aliyev and Pashinyan lavished Trump with praise and nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“What cracked maine up is that [they] didn’t suffer their mode astir however 1 has to pass successful Washington,” Andrey Kazantsev, an adept connected the region, told Al Jazeera.

They besides flattered Trump by naming the corridor the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) and leasing it to Washington for up to 99 years with exclusive improvement rights.

What looks similar 1 of Trump’s favourite existent property deals really heralds a tectonic shift.

“Trump’s medication has so been speedy to find its mode towards the long-due geopolitical pivot,” Kazantsev said.

China, which has been promoting its Belt and Road Initiative successful Asia and Eastern Europe, whitethorn stay “neutral” to it, and Russia, which has 2 subject bases successful Armenia, whitethorn “ignore it, astatine least, publicly”, helium said. “But for Iran, it’s a existent blow.”

‘A boost of Washington’s clout’

To defender the TRIPP, Washington whitethorn usage a backstage subject institution – and yet physique a subject basal that nominally safeguards Armenia but really keeps an oculus connected Iran, said Ukrainian governmental expert Aleksey Kushch.

“It means much imaginable unit connected Iran and a boost of Washington’s clout successful the resource-rich Caspian portion wherever US lipid companies made sizeable investments” successful the 1990s, helium said.

And Moscow is besides astir to suffer a lot.

“No substance however paradoxical it sounds, it’s Moscow that has been and inactive is simply a decisive origin successful the bid colony betwixt Armenia and Azerbaijan and successful solving the latter’s occupation of accessing Nakhchivan,” said Alisher Ilkhamov, caput of Central Asia Due Diligence, a deliberation vessel successful London.

“One of the main motives for rapprochement of some sides is their propulsion to get escaped of Moscow’s influence, of the peacekeeper’s relation it has imposed connected them,” helium told Al Jazeera.

The caller woody “only highlights however fictitious Moscow’s relation arsenic peacekeeper and middleman successful bid colony successful the South Caucasus is”, Ilkhamov said.

However, the woody is not yet acceptable successful stone, and the Trump-hosted acme “sparked premature optimism”, said Kevork Oskanian of the University of Exeter, successful the United Kingdom.

This optimism “should beryllium tempered by realism and humanities precedent [as] galore bid processes person failed contempt promising starts”, helium told Al Jazeera.

A woody not yet done

Baku, whose yearly $5bn defence spending exceeds Yerevan’s full debt-hobbled authorities budget, affirmed Armenia’s territorial integrity but did not retreat from immoderate 200sq km (77sq miles) of its land.

The TRIPP’s conception avoids Baku’s request for the corridor’s extraterritoriality, balancing sovereignty with strategical access, Oskanian said.

But determination are besides questions arsenic to whether Washington’s initiatives are “a principled involution oregon opportunistic geopolitics”, helium added.

Even without nonstop confrontation, Moscow and Tehran could effort to undermine the deal.

“Their grudging acquiescence is indispensable – but acold from guaranteed,” Oskanian said.

Iran threatened connected Saturday that the TRIPP “will not go a gateway for Trump’s mercenaries – it volition go their graveyard”.

Armenia is simply a ideology “polarised” implicit the nonaccomplishment of Nagorno-Karabakh and Pashinyan’s conflict with the Armenian Apostolic Church, Oskanian said.

To finalise the bid deal, Pashinyan would request to clasp a referendum amending Armenia’s constitution that mentions the “reunification” with Nagorno-Karabakh – and triumph the 2026 parliamentary vote.

Therefore, the occurrence of Trump’s woody depends connected galore intricacies of South Caucasus authorities – and the West “must prosecute with nuance – not conscionable geopolitics”, Oskanian concluded.