By Robert M. Cutler
In late December 2025, Armenia’s Central Election Commission pointed to June 7, 2026, as the likely date for parliamentary elections, implicitly tightening the timetable for any referendum linked to the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace agreement. With the text initialed but unsigned, Yerevan and Baku face steps towards ratification, slowly continuing border demarcation work, and interim arrangements. Russia, Turkey, and Iran are signaling their interests, but Armenia’s domestic politics will be decisive for the treaty’s signature and entry into force, and for the implementation of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
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BACKGROUND: Early in 2025, Armenia and Azerbaijan moved the peace process beyond a notional document toward a text whose core provisions are settled. On March 13, 2025, the two foreign ministries publicly stated that they had concluded negotiations on the draft “Agreement on Peace and the Establishment of Interstate Relations.” At the same time, Azerbaijan framed its signature as contingent on changes to Armenia’s constitution.
While the March 2025 step did not produce an immediate signature, it shifted the process from drafting to preconditions and sequencing. Whereas Baku treats language in the preamble to Armenia’s constitution as a territorial claim, Yerevan rejects that interpretation, pointing to the possibility of a constitutional referendum without setting a definite timeline. The draft also contains language that would bar deployment of third-country personnel along the Armenia–Azerbaijan border. That provision bears directly on any monitoring presence near the frontier and, more broadly, on how the parties intend to manage security before demarcation is complete.
On August 8, 2025, the process advanced again in Washington. The parties initialed the text, and on August 11, Armenia published the full draft by mutual agreement. This U.S.-brokered step still stopped short of formal signature. The published text is explicit on several foundational points: it affirms mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity on the basis that former Soviet administrative borders become international borders; it renounces territorial claims; and it bars the use or threat of force as well as the use of each party’s territory by a third party for force against the other.
The draft also specifies the intended machinery for implementation. Diplomatic relations are to be established within a specified number of days after completion of ratification, although the published draft leaves that number blank. Border commissions are tasked to negotiate a separate delimitation and demarcation agreement. In the interim, the parties commit not to deploy third-party forces along the border and to adopt mutually agreed confidence-building measures pending demarcation. Additional “modalities” to be negotiated later include the detailed handling of missing persons and the working rules for the bilateral commission that is meant to oversee implementation.
IMPLICATIONS: Armenia’s domestic political timetable has become a binding constraint on the pace and sequencing of decisions. On December 24, 2025, Armenpress reported that the chairman of the Central Election Commission said that June 7, 2026, was widely regarded as the likely election day, although a presidential decree had not yet been issued. That prospective date matters because Azerbaijan’s constitutional precondition points toward a referendum route in Armenia, while the treaty text itself anticipates domestic procedures and ratification steps before it can take effect. As of January 2026, the agreement’s core commitments are public and the text has been initialed, but signature and operational implementation still depend on how Yerevan and Baku sequence domestic legal assurances, border-related work, and interim security arrangements.
The Armenia–Azerbaijan peace framework stipulates that the route remains Armenian sovereign territory, while granting the U.S. exclusive development rights for 99 years. Washington would presumably pay Yerevan for the lease, with the land sub-leased to an Armenian-U.S. joint venture that would serve as the operator, holding a long-term mandate to construct and manage rail, road, pipelines, and fiber-optic infrastructure along the approximately 25 miles of Armenian territory linking Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan. The U.S. might potentially deploy limited security personnel to ensure corridor security, but official texts remain vague on any on-the-ground presence.
The peace text, as well as official Armenian statements, emphasize that the route is to be operated under Armenian law, with Yerevan retaining jurisdiction and administrative control. That emphasis, which is intended to foreclose putative concerns about extraterritorial claims by Azerbaijan, is necessary to placate and manage domestic and diaspora opinion. However, the framework agreement does not resolve key practical questions, including customs and border management details such as who stamps cargo, how fees are shared, and whether streamlined or special customs procedures will apply.
At this stage, the issue is less about drafting than durability. If the corridor arrangement proceeds under a 99-year U.S. development right, regional capitals will treat it as a strategic marker as well as a transport project. Moscow will judge it against its South Caucasus position; Tehran will weigh it against its red lines on transit and foreign presence; Ankara and Brussels will look for leverage on connectivity and standards. In Armenia, the sovereignty formula will be measured against day-to-day control at the route. Those pressures will shape prospects more than the text itself.
The attitudes of the three major regional players – Russia, Turkey, and Iran – are important conditioning factors, but none seems willing and able to block a peace deal definitively. For example, Moscow publicly welcomed the U.S.-brokered step but also warned that involvement by “non-regional players” should not create new divisions. Russia’s core attitude appears to be conditional acceptance of a peace text, paired with resistance to a long-duration U.S. operational footprint in a sensitive strip of Armenia. The warning language is less about the agreement’s existence than about who institutionalizes it and who physically manages it. A predictable Russian preference is that any corridor implementation be folded back into regionally branded formats. Indirect Russian-linked participation remains structurally available because a subsidiary of Russian Railways holds a concession to manage Armenia’s railway network.
Iran ostensibly welcomes the peace while warning against foreign “intervention” near its borders. Its attitude thus refuses to tolerate any outcome that looks like a change in the geopolitical configuration around Armenia’s southern border. Iranian commentary has linked the TRIPP specifically to concerns about a NATO-adjacent presence on the border. A senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader used escalatory deterrent rhetoric portraying the corridor concept as unacceptable and explicitly threatened to prevent “geopolitical changes.” Tehran’s interests are actually best served by a re-ignition of the conflict and the economic impoverishment of the Armenian population, both of which would decrease Yerevan’s autonomy and open for enhanced Iranian influence. Yet of course, it cannot say this out loud. Tehran’s lacks any actual capacity for vetoing the agreement but can exercise coercive signaling through military exercises, political warnings, and pressure through regional alignments.
Turkey strongly favors any route that de-isolates Nakhchivan, welcoming the corridor concept as a gain for strategic connectivity linking Europe to Asia via Turkey. However, despite its conditional welcome of a U.S.-anchored commercial structure, Ankara still wants the region’s political center of gravity to remain in the Ankara–Baku axis rather than shifting to Washington as the indispensable actor. A commercially functioning route will accelerate Turkey’s own normalization goals with Armenia, which are explicitly tied to an Armenia–Azerbaijan peace treaty outcome. In late December 2025, Armenia and Turkey implemented a limited but concrete confidence step on visa procedures for certain official passport holders, effective January 1, 2026. Turkey will want a formula that works for Armenia, because a route that triggers prolonged Armenian internal instability would not be in Turkish interests.
CONCLUSIONS: To summarize, Russia would like to keep the process “regionalizable” and resist a precedent of long-term U.S. operating control, while Iran will treat optics as substance, especially regarding anything that looks like foreign security infrastructure adjacent to Iran’s border. Turkey’s attitude is broadly enabling, because the route advances Ankara’s connectivity vision and strengthens its ties with Azerbaijan. The evolution of domestic Armenian politics, however, is what will really determine the outcome: whether Pashinyan’s forces receive a majority of seats in the June parliamentary election, and whether a subsequent referendum will approve the necessary change in Armenia’s constitution.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Robert M. Cutler is Director and Senior Fellow, Energy Security Program, NATO Association of Canada. He was for many years a senior researcher at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University.
