168: Yerevan is trying to inspire Tehran with the security of the “Trump Corridor”.

The day before, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev had a telephone conversation at the initiative of Yerevan, during which they “exchanged thoughts on the first anniversary of the peace summit held in Washington on August 8, 2025 with the support of Donald Trump, during which peace was established between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the text of the peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia was initialed,” the Armenian government said in a statement.

Talking to local and foreign journalists in Yerevan the other day, Mr. Prime Minister spoke in his special emotional-long-winded style. was telling about the common good that should be achieved in the event of the implementation of the not unknown project “Trump Corridor for Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP). According to Pashinyan, the old-“new” authorities of Armenia “have an open and transparent position regarding the implementation of TRIPP”, ready to “answer all questions related to possible concerns”, because, allegedly, Yerevan “cannot afford ambitious statements and intentions related to intervening in conflicts between major powers”.

The opening of the “Zangezur Corridor” is already an imminent prospect, in an interview with CNN TÜRK announced Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev. “…it’s not such a distant prospect. Intensive diplomatic and physical efforts continue.” “The Armenian side has promised to actively start construction works by the end of the year… they already started primary blasting (in different sectors) last year.” tells communications expert Rauf Aghamirzaev.

TRIPP is a major economic and infrastructural project designed to benefit the region, Armenia and Iran, which allows no more, no less, “to open railway communication from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea through the territories of Azerbaijan, Iran, Armenia and Georgia,” said Pashinyan, seeing America (justified or not is a separate question) as a certain factor balancing the influence of the Turkish neighbors. Allegedly, “it is one of those projects that refutes the statements that its implementation excludes any country in the region.

On the contrary, it is a project that includes everyone.” Here, the head of the government is literally hiding in Syunik’s supposed corridor the real goal, the purpose of which, in addition to connecting the main territory of Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan and Turkey, is hidden in ensuring the reliable control of American and transnational corporations over the transit arteries of South Transcaucasia (and, accordingly, the northern borders of Iran).

Earlier we wrote About the establishment of an interesting structure called TRIPP Enterprise Fund, renamed Trans-Caspian Enterprise Fund, led by international venture investor Konstantin Sokolov, the owner of a number of assets in Armenia, including VIVA Armenia and the Teghut copper-molybdenum mine, who is actively interested in Armenia’s railway infrastructure.

It should be noted that Sokolov, born in Leningrad, is closely connected with the Jewish environment, as well as Arieh Lightstone, the senior adviser of the special envoy Steve Wittkoff, one of the architects of the TRIPP project, according to the University Yeshiva rabbi, who at the beginning of August has met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, his deputy Mher Grigoryan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.

Working at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Lightstone promoted economic settlement within the framework of the Abrahamic Accords. Apparently, now this experience is planned to be applied in the South Caucasus as well, as evidenced by Lightstone’s recent statement. “A little creative approach, and we will create one of the main trade routes in the world and overcome the impasse in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

Official relations according toA year ago, the corridor passing through the Syunik Marz of Armenia, presented in Washington, will function with great pomp within the framework of national jurisdiction, without violating the country’s sovereignty in matters of state border management, border control and customs administration, etc. However, in reality, to put it mildly, it will not be so, if only because the USA receives exclusive rights to develop the corridor for a period of up to 99 years inclusive.

The development of the “Trump Corridor”, the launch of which (under the name “Zanguzur Corridor”) has been announced by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at the end of 2028, is the creation of new transit arteries under the auspices of the United States, including the modernization of existing arteries and the rehabilitation of those that have not been in operation since the beginning of the 1990s.

The company TRIPP Development, founded by Washington and Yerevan, will receive land use and construction rights in the relevant zones in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, at the government meeting on July 16. informed Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan. The initial period of these rights will be 49 years.

During that time, 74% of the company’s shares will belong to the United States, and 26% to Armenia. After the end of the specified period, the parties can extend the partnership for another 50 years by mutual agreement, and in case of extension, Armenia’s share in the TRIPP Development Company will be 49% (by the way, the “happy” time still has to live before that).

Tripp Development Company will be able to create special purpose companies for the implementation of separate projects and involve subcontractors, Mirzoyan continued, adding that two more documents remain to be amended for the official start of the project: the shareholder agreement and the company’s charter.

The RA government approved the bill on ratifying the framework agreement on strategic partnership with the United States within the framework of the Trump Road to International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) project, signed by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his short visit to Yerevan on May 26.

Together with the Charter of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Armenia and the United States and the Framework Memorandum on “Supply Assurance in the Extraction and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths,” this document sets the framework for the dominant participation of American corporations in trans-Caucasian transit routes.

The main obstacle to the implementation of TRIPP can be the “destabilization of the situation in the region”, complains the head of the Armenian government, preferring to remain silent about its real culprits, while speaking about the expediency of implementing the project “as soon as possible”.

Equally important is the position of neighboring Iran, where Nikol Pashinyan is apparently preparing to leave for a visit, the specific dates of which “have not yet been decided”.

It should be noted that recently the Armenian-Iranian contacts, which are already quite lively, have acquired additional dynamics. Thus, on July 21-23, the analytical center “APRI Armenia” in Yerevan together with the Iranian Embassy in the southern city of Kapan spent closed expert seminar on “Iranian-Armenian strategic partnership in the South Caucasus in the light of geopolitical and geoeconomic transformations”.

According to official information, issues of bilateral relations were discussed, including economy, energy, transport communications, information interaction, as well as the activity of regional and extra-regional actors in the South Caucasus. Iranian Ambassador to Yerevan Khalil Shirgholami and Syunik Marz Governor Robert Ghukasyan noted the need to adapt the special relations between Iran and Armenia to dynamically changing realities for the further development of strategic partnership.

Within the framework of his visit to Syunik, the head of the Iranian diplomatic mission visited the “Noravan” substation of the power transmission line being built from Iran’s Norduz to Yerevan.

On June 27, the Armenian government and Iranian contractors awarded the construction of a 7.2 km long tunnel within the framework of the Agarak-Kajaran road as part of the “North-South” road in Syunik region. the start which is being built with a loan from the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development. In addition, according to Mehr agency, during the meeting between Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad and RA Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Davit Khudatyan in Tehran, the Iranian side proposed a new trade scheme for increasing natural gas supplies to Armenia.

According to some observers in Baku, all this indicates Tehran’s desire to maintain an active influence on the processes in the South Caucasus, including the prospects of launching the “Zangezur Corridor”.

Indeed, Iranians have no illusions about the intentions of the opponents who do not hide their aggressive intentions during the armed confrontation in the Middle East that has been going on for almost half a year. Thus, before his trip to Syunik, commenting on the TRIPP project during the press conference on July 8 of this year, Shirgholamin announced, that “…Armenia should develop a mechanism that will allow realizing the potential of unblocking regional communications, but at the same time taking into account the possible risks and threats for Iran in case of the American presence”.

By the way, as early as the end of December 2025, the leader’s then advisor Ali Akbar Velayat had refused that project, because it “could lead to the presence of NATO in the area adjacent to the north of Iran, creating serious risks for the security of northern Iran and southern Russia”.

Submitted in August 2025 Trump’s plan “It is being promoted with enthusiasm through the entry of American companies into the Armenian market.” Which is not surprising, since the US has a history of entering sensitive regions through projects that the Americans present as economic initiatives. But such involvement has gradually expanded into military and power dimensions.”

It is appropriate to remember the separation of the state of Panama from Colombia in the early 1900s through the transatlantic Panama Canal, which belonged to the United States until the end of the 1970s. Another, less well-known example is the United States’ occupation of the central-Caribbean islands of Swan (Honduras), Mais (Nicaragua), and Roncador (Colombia) in the spirit of the “Monroe Doctrine” up to and including the early 1970s in connection with the idea of ​​building a “Nicaragua” canal to replace the Panama Canal in the early 1920s.

It emerged in the first half of the 1950s Through central Cuba the American canal project, for which the United States achieved an extraterritorial economic-de facto administrative presence on the Caribbean island of Pinos adjacent to Cuba and on the Cuban islands of Jardines de la Reina, located adjacent to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay (such presence was revoked by Havana in 1959). Of course, all these examples refer to the Western Hemisphere, which the White House owners have been trying to protect from European and other competitors with more or less success.

Obviously, the “Monroe Doctrine” does not even work there, and even more so, it looks illusory thousands of kilometers away, in the mountains of the Caucasus, where self-confident American “business people” will have to somehow take into account the interests and real intentions of Iran, Russia and Turkey.

DMITRI NEFYODOV

fondsk.ru

Translation by Zhanna Avetisyan

—