News Update

A small Christian country is about to hand a stronger neighbor the road through its last southern province, and Washington is backing the deal.

The country is Armenia. The province is Syunik, the thin strip of land at Armenia’s southern tip, wedged between Azerbaijan and Iran. Azerbaijan wants it because it’s the one thing standing between the rest of the country and Nakhchivan, its exclave that borders Turkey. Open that corridor, and Baku can move west without asking Moscow or Tehran, and without Yerevan’s leverage in the way.

Armenia itself is a landlocked republic of about three million people, bounded by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. In A.D. 301, it became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its state religion. For more than 17 centuries since, the Armenian Apostolic Church has preserved the people’s language, liturgy, and memory through foreign rule, genocide, and Soviet domination. In 1915, as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed, deported, or driven from their homes in the Ottoman Empire. Tsitsernakaberd, the memorial above Yerevan, commemorates those dead.

In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a 44-day war for Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian highland Armenians call Artsakh, and the seven districts around it that Armenian forces had held since the 1990s. Baku took the surrounding districts and part of the enclave, including Shushi. A Russian ceasefire left the rest of Artsakh under Armenian control, with Russian peacekeepers on the road out, who did not prevent the destruction that followed.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan finished the job, overrunning what remained of Artsakh and sending about 120,000 Christians fleeing. Churches, monuments, and inscriptions have since been damaged, altered, or destroyed. In 2021 and 2022, between the two campaigns, Azerbaijani troops also crossed into Armenia itself, in Syunik and Gegharkunik. Baku used force first against the Armenian enclave, then against Armenia’s own frontier.

Washington is therefore doing two things at once: offering Armenia an economic opening and a presence other than Moscow’s, while backing a road through Syunik, the province next in Baku’s sights. Partnership, though, shouldn’t require historical amnesia. The United States shouldn’t treat the emptying of Artsakh’s churches, the prisoners still held in Baku, or the naming of the 1915 killings as obstacles to a successful deal.

The peace treaty meant to accompany the road remains unsigned. Azerbaijan still wants changes to Armenia’s constitution, especially language Baku reads as a claim on Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinyan won re-election on June 7 but lacks the two-thirds majority needed for a referendum, so he’s writing a new constitution instead. He says the draft, expected in coming months, will drop any reference to the 1990 Declaration of Independence, which the current constitution cites in its preamble and which affirms Armenia’s support for recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

On September 16 Armenia’s Constitutional Court held that the U.S.–Armenia framework for the Trump Route complies with the constitution after which the bill goes to the National Assembly. Ratification needs only a simple majority, which the governing party already holds. Construction on the Armenian stretch is still spoken of for 2027. Azerbaijan is already building toward the border on its side while Armenia finalizes approval from the National Assembly.

That road is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP: about 42 kilometers of rail and connecting infrastructure through Armenian territory. The framework was signed June 1 in Washington and June 4 in Yerevan, building on the August 8, 2025 White House commitments. Washington describes it as unimpeded multimodal transit that still respects Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States holds 74 percent of the TRIPP Development Company, Armenia 26 percent, for 49 years, extendable by another 50, after which the split becomes 51/49 with no further Armenian capital. Construction could begin early next year. An engineering survey is already underway. The same May meetings produced a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Charter and a framework on critical minerals and rare earths.

Will the stronger parties, in this case the U.S., protect the sovereignty, history, and historical heritage of the weaker party? If the route brings prosperity while Armenian officers govern the 42 kilometers, and while churches, graves, and official memory remain secure, it may yet be an instrument of peace.

If Armenia is reduced to a transit strip between Azerbaijan and Turkey, while the founding text that highlights the 1915 genocide is dropped from the constitution and the remaining Christian ground is left unprotected, then “peace” is just a slogan to justify might at the expense of the weak.

Christians in the United States should not use “bedrock of Christian civilization” as a slogan and then look away from the genocide. Ask whether Armenian courts and customs will in fact govern the line. Ask what happens to village churches and cemeteries in Syunik that have already seen Azerbaijani troops nearby.

America First and optimistically named “strategic” bilateral partnerships should not come at the expense of our brothers and sisters.

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