Vance Heads to Armenia, Azerbaijan As US Pushes Peace, Trade, And Minerals Strategy

US Vice President JD Vance will visit Armenia and Azerbaijan to reinforce a US-brokered peace deal and advance a strategic transit corridor Washington sees as central to reshaping trade, energy, and influence across the South Caucasus.

Vance will arrive in Armenia for a February 9 visit focused on trade, investment, and infrastructure in the region. At the center of the visit is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a proposed 43-kilometer road-and-rail corridor through Armenia that would link Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave while opening a new east-west trade artery bypassing Russia and Iran.

The transit route is part of a peace agreement brokered in Washington in August 2025 between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that looks to end decades of war between the two countries.

“Vance’s visit should serve to reaffirm the US’s commitment to seeing the Trump Route through,” Joshua Kucera, senior South Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group, told RFE/RL. “Many in the region will also be watching to see whether Vance signals a deepening of US involvement in resolving the conflict.”

Few details have been disclosed ahead of the visit, but US President Donald Trump said in a social media post in late January that Vance’s tour would “strengthen our strategic partnership with Azerbaijan, a beautiful Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation with Armenia, Deals for our Great Semiconductor Makers, and the sale of Made in the U.S.A. Defense Equipment, such as body armor and boats, and more, to Azerbaijan.”

The peace agreement has boosted Washington’s position in the region at a time when Russia’s influence has faced setbacks in Baku and Yerevan. Vance’s arrival also coincides with other regional developments -- such as US-Iran tensions amid ongoing peace talks in Oman and a new US-backed critical minerals initiative -- that analysts say has placed the South Caucasus at an unlikely nexus for US policy priorities.

TRIPP, which potentially opens up new trade links between Central Asia and Europe that bypass Russia and Iran, could also enable new ways for Central Asian critical minerals and metals to flow to Western markets, which was a focal point of a November 2025 summit between Trump and Central Asian leaders.

“It’s noteworthy that it’s Vance on this trip,” Joseph Epstein, director of the Washington-based Yorktown Institute's Turan Research Center, told RFE/RL. “He represents a more isolationist part of the White House, but he’s going to be championing deals on this trip that weaken Russian and Iranian influence -- and the throughline is critical minerals.”

Washington Eyes The South Caucasus

Vance will be the most senior US official to ever visit Armenia and is the first to visit Azerbaijan since former US Vice President Dick Cheney in 2008.

“There hasn’t been engagement with the region of this kind since the Bush administration, and that was largely all through Georgia,” said Epstein.

Cheney also visited Georgia that year and former US President George W. Bush visited Tbilisi in 2005. Joe Biden also visited Georgia as vice president in 2009.

The August 2025 deal that Washington brokered with Aliyev and Pashinyan followed nearly 40 years of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Under the agreement, the countries relinquished all claims to each other's territory and are required to refrain from using force against one another and pledge to respect international law. TRIPP emerged as an economically focused component of that wider deal and is designed to foster peace through economic interdependence and integration while working as a confidence-building mechanism for both sides.

TRIPP also offered a solution to a crucial part of the 2020 cease-fire agreement with Armenia and Azerbaijan: unfettered transport access to its exclave of Nakhchivan while also allowing Yerevan to maintain control over its sovereign territory along the proposed route.

Until recently, few details were public about how the route would be implemented, but US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan announced a detailed framework on January 13.

They announced the creation of a new TRIPP Development Company (TDC) that will construct the initial rail and road segments of the project, with the United States taking a 74 percent controlling stake for the first 49 years. That will then revert to a 51 percent US stake for the following 50 years should it be agreed to be extended.

"In a region like the Caucasus, even a small amount of attention from the US can make a significant impact,” said Kucera.

Once completed, TRIPP will connect to other developing infrastructure projects in Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan, and Turkey, and serve as an important node connecting to the Middle Corridor, an emerging 6,500-kilometer-long trade route, bypassing Russia, that connects China to Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus.

TRIPP would also help circumvent Georgia, whose relations with the United States and Europe have deteriorated in recent years as the ruling Georgian Dream party has taken on an increasingly anti-Western posture amid a pivot closer to Russia and China.

Linking Peace To Supply Chains

Ahead of Vance’s visit, Armenia also sent signals that it is leaning toward selecting an American company to build a new nuclear reactor to replace its aging Russian-built Metsamor facility.

While a decision isn’t expected until later in 2026 or 2027, David Khudatyan, Armenia's minister of territorial administration and infrastructure, said that the new plant would have a modular design, a type of nuclear technology where US firms are considered a leader.

That would broadly align with US policy goals under the Trump administration aimed at ensuring access to Eurasia's strategic resources and integrating metals and critical minerals into its supply chain.

On February 4, Vance unveiled plans to marshal US partners into a preferential trade bloc for critical minerals, proposing coordinated price floors as Washington escalates efforts to loosen China's grip on materials crucial to advanced manufacturing.

Few issues have shaped the White House's agenda since Trump returned to office more than critical minerals, a group of roughly 50 mineral commodities that the US Geological Survey has deemed critical to the country's national and economic security. Among those commodities are rare earths, 17 elements used in everything from wind turbines to smartphones to fighter jet engines.

Representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan were among the 55 countries at the launch event in Washington for the new US initiative.

Eldaniz Gusseinov, head of research at Nightingale Intelligence, a political foresight firm, told RFE/RL that TRIPP, which would open up Armenia and Azerbaijan’s closed border, would connect to those broader goals by providing a way for Central Asian minerals to be more easily brought to Western markets.

“Logistics is the main question for all of this,” he said. “Currently, most of Central Asia’s raw materials are going to China, but TRIPP could help provide new incentives to draw in investment and provide new alternatives.”