In an unprecedented statement, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced new dimensions of the movements for the implementation of the alleged Zangezur corridor, which was renamed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) after the trilateral statement of August 8, 2025 at the White House. Pashinyan emphasized: Armenia is currently examining two scenarios with the United States for leasing the “Trump Route” for 49 or 99 years; the name of the company will also be determined soon. Both countries will be present on the board of directors of the consortium, the proportion of which depends on the share of investments. The Armenian Prime Minister emphasized: “Trump Route” will have several stages and an agreement was reached with Aliyev in Copenhagen on the construction of power transmission lines and a gas pipeline. He added: “The Trump route is the fastest way to build the power transmission line and gas pipeline, and priority will be given to determining the border in the areas where the infrastructure of the Trump route project must pass.”

Regarding the Armenian Prime Minister’s statements, six explanatory points can be made:

First, Pashinyan’s statements reinforce the speculations that have been going on since May 1404 regarding the behind-the-scenes agreements between Yerevan and Baku and Ankara regarding NATO’s Turanian Corridor. According to these speculations, Aliyev, Erdogan, and Pashinyan, after an undeclared coordination to hit Russia’s interests in the Caucasus, were obliged, based on the notification of the British and American think tanks, to choose a new title for the fake Zangezur Corridor for the time being in order to reduce Iran’s sensitivity to border and geopolitical changes. They also avoided using the word corridor, so that at the same time, through the structural activities of the lobby networks of Baku and Ankara’s influence in Iran, the issue of geopolitical threats would be inverted and simplified. Finally, with Trump’s direct entry into the atmosphere after the 12-day war with the Israeli regime, Tehran’s resistance to this geopolitical intrigue would be broken.

Second, changing the Armenian constitution, waiving the historical and legal right of the Armenians of Karabakh to return to their homeland, waiving the right of more than three hundred thousand Armenians to return to Baku and other cities of the Republic of Azerbaijan, failing to pursue the fate of the imprisoned leaders of Karabakh in Baku, unilaterally changing the disputed state symbols, dissolving some of the nationalist parties of Armenia and prosecuting them, failing to strengthen the Armenian army and cleansing it of national elements, weakening the church as a supporter of a unified Armenia, dissolving the Minsk Group, withdrawing legal complaints related to ethnic cleansing and war crimes, completely expelling Russia from the Caucasus, including closing two Russian military bases in Armenia, and joining these countries to the Abraham Plan, are part of the agendas that Aliyev and Pashinyan, as contractors of the Anglo-Saxon order, have reviewed and agreed upon with the mediation of the United States and the staging of London in the last two years. Some of them have been implemented, while others, due to obvious considerations, have been postponed until after the fateful general elections in Armenia on June 17, 2026; at the same time, the Anglo-Saxon axis has guaranteed the rule of the Aliyev and Pashinyan families for about the next two decades.

Third; Pashinyan, referring to the 49-year or 99-year lease plan for the Trump route, and explaining the planned capacities for this route in the field of electricity, gas, oil, fiber optics, and rail and road lines, showed that a long-term plan has been planned for the presence of the United States and other NATO countries in the South Caucasus in coordination with Baku, Yerevan, and Ankara; What the Armenian Prime Minister has not mentioned yet is the width of this so-called Route, the announcement of which will be a nullity for opinions that claim that the danger of the corridor in this region has been eliminated. In particular, Article 3 of the White House trilateral statement in August 2025 on Unimpeded Connectivity emphasizes that from a legal perspective, this phrase creates an interpretation at the disposal of Baku to oppose any security surveillance and customs control, and introduces a concept of a corridor for this route.

Fourth; When we talk about lease in domestic law, we mean the possibility of the tenant benefiting from the ownership of a specific object for a certain period of time; that is, the lease contract is a temporary ownership contract. Unlike domestic law, where the “use of ownership” for a specific period of time is prominent in the lease contract, in international law, when we talk about “international lease”, the element of “exercise of sovereignty” is actually prominent. In such cases, sovereignty is transferred to the international company or the leasing state for the lease period. According to the Prime Minister of Armenia, the lease of the Trump route will be given to a joint Armenian-American consortium in proportion to the amount of investment; it is obvious that the United States will have the upper hand in the amount of investment in this project and, as a result, the exercise of sovereignty and will over this route will be carried out by the United States; Yerevan’s emphasis that the agreement emphasizes the territorial jurisdiction, sovereignty, and independence of Armenia will have no effect in practice; To understand this issue, it is sufficient to point out that the costly American presence in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from 1903, in the Panama Canal until 1999, and in the establishment of military bases in many countries, resulted from these same lease and investment contracts.

Fifth, the “Trump Route” lease plan, if implemented, will directly make Iran a neighbor of the United States for 49 or 99 years and will face a multitude of challenges on Iran’s common border with Armenia. Simple solutions such as establishing a corridor further from Iran’s borders, creating an overpass or underpass at the intersection of the Iranian route with this route, or excluding the exercise of US sovereignty over the Iran-Armenia road will not be a solution; because the corridor approach will ultimately cause geopolitical changes. It is precisely because of this perspective that Ilham Aliyev and his lobby inside Iran are unwilling to refrain from using the alleged term Zangezur Corridor. At the same time as the crisis of population migration from Syunik and the weakening of nationalist figures in this region, they emphasize the drumbeat of the fake term “Western Azerbaijan” and the return of the “Yeraz”. Interestingly, the Pashinyan government is not even willing to mention the issue of the return of more than 300,000 Armenians expelled from Baku, Ganja, Shamkir, Shamakhi and other cities of the Republic of Azerbaijan. In fact, the second point that Pashinyan has not yet acknowledged is the announcement of the name of the main investor, the Republic of Azerbaijan, in Trump’s path. This issue is related to the energy contract between Baku and Exxon Mobil in August 2025 at the White House. For this reason, Article 4 of the White House’s August 2025 statement did not block the participation of third parties in Trump’s plan.

Sixth; It seems that in the chaotic market of the decline of the international order and the intensification of the confrontation of the powers and their allies from Ukraine to Africa and from West Asia to Southeast Asia, the three contractors of the Anglo-Saxon order (the governments of Baku, Yerevan and Ankara) are moving step by step to implement NATO’s Turanian Corridor as the “king of the London and Washington plan in the 21st century.” This plan intends to strengthen the Anglo-Saxon order by hitting Iran, Russia and China in the region’s energy and transit equations, America’s access to rare metals, NATO’s expansion to both sides of the Caspian Sea, the creation of the so-called Turkic world based on the idea of ​​British pan-Turanism to spread the virus of ethnocentrism against these three countries, as well as Israel’s transit and strategic support by connecting the David Corridor to the alleged Zangezur Corridor; but what these elements have not counted on is the unpredictable behavior of a large number of revisionist actors with parallel or common interests, including Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, New Delhi, Athens, etc. Perhaps some of the developments in recent weeks in Ukraine, Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Persian Gulf will open the eyes of the elements who follow the path of Saakashvili and Zelensky. Iran’s red lines in the Caucasus have not changed, but rather its legitimacy and overlap with other actors with aligned and parallel interests have become clearer and more pronounced.

*Dr. Ahmad Kazemi, Professor of International Law at the University and Senior Researcher on Eurasia