Armenia, Azerbaijan Sign Historic US-Brokered Peace Deal

World 12:23 PM - 2025-08-09

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev signed a historic peace agreement on Friday at the White House in the presence of U.S. President Donald Trump.

If upheld, the deal would end nearly four decades of tension and conflict between the two nations over control of Nagorno-Karabakh in south-western Azerbaijan.

"Today we are writing a great new history," Azerbaijani President Aliyev said as he addressed journalists at the White House together with Trump and Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan. 

Aliyev thanked Trump for bringing "peace" to the Caucasus region.

Armenia's Pashinyan said the deal represented "opening a chapter of peace," calling it a success "for our countries and for our region."

He also commended Trump for his "legacy as a statesman and the peacemaker."

President Trump said all three of them had an "extensive" conversation and had signed "voluminous documents" related to a peace deal.

"It's a long time, 35 years, they fought, and now they're friends, and they're going to be friends for a long time," President Trump said. 

Background to the Armenia–Azerbaijan Conflict

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan date back to the late 1980s, when Nagorno-Karabakh — a mountainous Azerbaijani region with a majority ethnic Armenian population — broke away from Azerbaijan with Armenia’s support.

Azerbaijan regained full control of the region in 2023 through a military offensive, prompting almost all of the territory’s remaining 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.

Speaking on Friday, President Trump said both countries had agreed to cease hostilities, establish diplomatic relations, and respect each other’s territorial integrity. He also announced the lifting of US restrictions on military cooperation with Azerbaijan.

The exact wording of the agreement has not yet been released. Central to the deal is the creation of a trade and transit corridor through the South Caucasus, to be named after President Trump. This route will connect Azerbaijan with its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, currently separated by a 32-kilometre (20-mile) strip of Armenian territory.

Under the agreement, the United States will receive exclusive development rights to the transit corridor, which the White House said would boost exports of energy and other resources from the region.

Azerbaijan’s demand for such a route to Nakhchivan had long been a sticking point in peace negotiations.

The two nations are also expected to sign a letter formally requesting the dissolution of the Minsk Group — a now-defunct mediation body under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).



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