OilPrice.com, a US energy-market outlet, reports that the TRIPP corridor linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan through Armenia remains unbuilt more than a year after it was agreed, blocked by Russian and Iranian resistance.
According to OilPrice.com, the TRIPP project covers roughly 40 kilometres of route through Armenian territory and would form the shortest segment of the Middle Corridor. The scheme emerged after the Armenia-Azerbaijan agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump in August 2025, but construction has yet to begin.
The outlet notes that Trump’s initiative, known as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), was meant to give Azerbaijan a direct link to its Nakhchivan exclave without passing through Iran, while also advancing the Middle Corridor, which connects Central Asia and Europe via the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey. OilPrice.com says Kazakhstan has shown particular interest in the project. Citing recent remarks by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the outlet writes that construction on the Armenian side could begin at the earliest in early 2027.
Iran and Russia factors
The article argues that the main reasons for the delay lie outside Armenia and Azerbaijan themselves. Following the US-Israel-Iran war, Tehran openly objected to the TRIPP route, which runs along Iran’s northern border, in places just a few hundred metres away. The outlet suggests that Iran currently provides the shortest transit route to Nakhchivan, giving it leverage over Azerbaijan, and that TRIPP could significantly reduce that dependence — an added motive, in OilPrice.com’s view, for Iranian opposition to the project.
OilPrice.com also points to another obstacle: Armenia’s rail network remains under a concession held by Russian Railways, the Russian state company. According to the outlet, the company’s chief executive has stressed that roughly $400 million has already been invested in Armenian infrastructure — a statement the author reads as either a bid for compensation or a sign of Moscow’s interest in taking part in TRIPP.
The outlet concludes that realising TRIPP will require broader political arrangements beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan, contingent on the outcome of US-Iran negotiations and on the state of relations between Washington and Moscow. Without such a settlement, it warns, the corridor will continue to carry serious geopolitical risk.
Read also: Eurasianet: Iran and Russia stalling the TRIPP corridor
