By Azerbaijan.US Editorial Board
Geopolitical rivalry in the South Caucasus is entering a sharper and more consequential phase. This is evident, among other things, from the dissatisfaction-expressed openly or implicitly-by Iran and Russia over the implementation of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), outlined in the joint declaration signed in Washington on December 8 by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the United States.
Iran’s Supreme Leader’s senior adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, during a meeting with Armenia’s ambassador Grigor Hakobyan, described the so-called “Trump plan” as effectively identical to the Zangezur Corridor-a project Tehran has opposed “from the very beginning.” Russia, for its part, signaled its own reservations through Mikhail Kalugin, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s CIS department, who emphasized Moscow’s claim to discuss both the initiative’s parameters and potential Russian participation, citing “sufficient grounds” to do so.
Those “grounds” are well known. South Caucasus Railway, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, holds the concession to operate Armenia’s rail network, while much of the proposed route would pass through areas where Russian border guards retain operational responsibility. In other words, both Tehran and Moscow see TRIPP not merely as a transport project, but as a geopolitical shift-one that risks diluting their traditional leverage in the region while expanding U.S. influence.
This raises a critical question: will Russia and Iran attempt concrete destabilizing actions to derail the project’s implementation?
The concern is not theoretical. Carey Cavanaugh, who served as a U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group from 1999 to 2001 (the body was officially dissolved on November 30, 2025), recently warned that “external actors such as Russia and Iran may attempt to complicate or undermine the progress achieved” in the Azerbaijan–Armenia peace process. His assessment reflects a broader U.S. understanding of how both Moscow and Tehran have traditionally approached regional normalization-namely, by rejecting the very possibility of Azerbaijani-Armenian peace outside frameworks they themselves control.
This logic explains Iran’s existential opposition to the Zangezur Corridor, which would link Azerbaijan not only with its Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic but also directly with Turkey. The resistance is particularly strong among Iran’s radical conservative circles close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who view such connectivity as a strategic threat.
The same logic underpinned Russia’s reluctance-during the period when it effectively monopolized mediation in the peace process-to facilitate the corridor’s implementation, despite the fact that this was explicitly stipulated in the November 10, 2020 trilateral statement that ended the 44-day war. Instead, Moscow opted to delay progress, calculating that prolonged uncertainty would preserve its leverage over the settlement process.
That calculation proved mistaken. Delaying the Zangezur Corridor directly contradicts the interests of Azerbaijan, the clear victor of the conflict, which fully restored its territorial integrity between 2020 and 2023 and has since pursued a direct, uninterrupted transport link between its main territory and Nakhchivan as a strategic priority.
At the same time, Azerbaijan’s broader strategy has been consistent: the construction of a durable peace and multilateral cooperation framework in the South Caucasus-one that strengthens the region’s own strategic autonomy rather than turning it into an arena for great-power rivalry. Baku has therefore resisted attempts to instrumentalize regional connectivity for geopolitical competition.
Even the Trump Route, approved by Azerbaijan, does not grant the United States any special status as an arbiter of the South Caucasus, nor does it provide Washington with mechanisms to undermine regional stability. From the outset, Baku has framed the Zangezur Corridor primarily as a vital internal transport link between parts of the Azerbaijani state and as a natural component of broader Asia-Europe connectivity.
U.S. involvement, meanwhile, is limited to facilitating-together with Armenia, through whose territory the route would pass-the technical and procedural guarantees required for unimpeded transit. Nothing more.
Could Russia and Iran still attempt to disrupt the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace process in general, and the Zangezur Corridor in particular? They could try. But the regional reality shaped over the past several years suggests that any such attempt would ultimately undermine their own long-term interests.
A serious disruption of the Zangezur Corridor would indeed damage the peace process. Yet any large-scale destabilization effort by Moscow or Tehran would almost certainly rely on Armenia’s vulnerabilities and on a misplaced bet on revanchist forces-a strategy that risks pushing Armenia toward another catastrophe, this time irreversible.
The structural trajectory, by contrast, points in a different direction: toward the continued strengthening of Azerbaijan’s strategic position, which will inevitably translate into the realization of its core connectivity objectives, including the Zangezur Corridor.
This reality is increasingly recognized in both Tehran and Moscow. Hence Iran’s emerging flexibility-reflected in the more cautious rhetoric of its president and foreign minister, who have avoided direct confrontation over the corridor-and Russia’s expressed willingness, at the level of its Foreign Ministry, to participate in the project’s implementation, even if it bears the name of a U.S. president.
All of this underscores a simple conclusion: there is no credible alternative to a strategic project driven by Azerbaijan’s will and grounded in regional realities.
