The historic trip of the American vice president is the first of a sitting president or vice president in the country and signals a geopolitical plan for simultaneous encirclement of Iran and promotion to the south, which is considered as Russia’s soft underbelly. Vance, who then visited on Tuesday, offered trade, energy and security deals that could move it away from the dual influence of Russia and Iran.
Excluded from the trip was Georgia, which under the government of the Georgian Dream party is considered to have returned to the Russian sphere of influence, in an interesting “rocket” with neighboring Armenia, which followed the reverse course from Russian control to a pro-Western perspective. It is characteristic that in 2008 the then vice president of the USA Dick Cheney had visited Azerbaijan and Georgia, while now Armenia was chosen as more friendly to the USA, demonstrating a significant reclassification in the region.
The “Trump Corridor” connects Turkey with the Caspian Sea
Vance’s main purpose was to promote the Zangezur trade route, a roughly 43-kilometer strip now renamed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), including a developing rail and road network linking the Azeri enclave of Nakhchivan, the Armenian province of Siunik, and itself Azerbaijan, in a particularly critical geopolitical region right on the border with Iran. The wider trade route, of which Zangezur is the most critical point, connects Turkey to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia, driving a wedge between Russia and Iran.
It is recalled that the development of this route was the main fruit of the agreement reached last August at the White House between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, ending a three-and-a-half-decade dispute over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.
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With peace in the region, Armenia has relented on its permanent national positions, accepting the completed expulsion of some 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, and hoping for American financial aid in the form of investments, which Vance’s visit aimed to speed up.
Challenging the ‘spheres of influence’ theory
In fact, the diplomatic trip shows, according to many analysts, that there has not been a division of the globe into “spheres of influence” between the US, Russia and other powers, as was perhaps assumed after the meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska last summer.
The priorities of the Vance trip show, instead, that US diplomacy is leveraging Russia’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine to push hard into key Eurasian regions that are important to Russia as well as China and Iran.
It should be noted that Russia tried at the end of 2025 to return to its economic penetration in Armenia, shaking up its role in the management of the Armenian railway network, but met with the strong refusal of Prime Minister Pashinyan, who emphasized the exclusivity of relations with the US in terms of the new “Trump Corridor”.
The focus is on the provision of nuclear know-how
The trade deals signed by Vance in Yerevan include giving US nuclear know-how and equipment to Armenia for peaceful use. At stake is the construction of a nuclear reactor to replace the old Russian-built nuclear power plant. For this construction, Armenia is open to proposals from different countries, including Russia, France, China and South Korea, but an American proposal after Vance’s visit would certainly have a geopolitical impact.
Overall, the agreements provide for up to $5 billion in US exports to Armenia and an additional $4 billion
dollars in fuel and maintenance contracts. In the area of security, deepening cooperation in drones with an emphasis on reconnaissance technology was announced.
The ebb and flow of online postings
In so-called “social media diplomacy” Vance was less successful as he initially posted a wreath-laying ceremony for the 1915 Armenian Genocide, but later deleted the post. The reversal angered the Armenian diaspora, certainly without pleasing Turkey, which denies committing genocide. It should be noted that Vance, despite laying wreaths at the Genocide Memorial, did not enter the Genocide Museum, while Prime Minister Pashinyan did not accompany him to that point. The event was seen by many as a tacit agreement by American and Armenian diplomacy not to overemphasize aspects of history that are traumatic for the current peace between Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The geopolitical importance of Azerbaijan
In Baku, the US vice president signed an agreement that provides for the dispatch of US ships to protect Azerbaijan’s territorial waters. The country is the US’s staunchest ally in the South Caucasus, while President Aliyev said the two countries’ cooperation is “entering a completely new phase” with an emphasis on defense and the use of artificial intelligence.
The overall Vance visit is typical of Trump diplomacy through trade deals. It continues a series of actions by the Trump administration, such as the peace agreement in August, but also the meeting in November at the White House of the leaders of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan) for a series of agreements.
Meanwhile, relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, although historically close, are at an all-time low following the December 2024 downing of an Azeri airliner, which was blamed on Russian forces allegedly interfering with its flight in an attempt to repel rival drones as part of the
war with Ukraine. The Russian reparations offer was almost a year late. If we add the intense American diplomatic movement to extract India from the intense energy relationship with Russia, then a combination of circumstances and intended actions is created that means a renewed effort to encircle Russia and Iran.
The implications for Turkey
Especially for Turkey, these events mean the fulfillment of the pan-Turkish vision, that is, the utilization of elements that emphasize the unity of all Turkic nations, as the Trump corridor brings a unification that reaches Central Asia, the region considered as their cradle. At the same time, Turkey is upgrading its military presence in Somalia with the deployment of three Turkish F-16 fighters, while at the same time maintaining a military base in the country and assisting in the training of Somali soldiers.
With the extension of Turkey’s influence to Somalia, the other pole of Turkish ideology is fulfilled, neo-Ottomanism, which, following the pattern of the Ottoman past, desires Turkish influence as far as the Horn of Africa. At the present time, Turkey sees elements of both its pan-Turkish and neo-Ottoman ideological programs succeeding.
The price is potential complications in Turkey’s relationship with Israel: while in terms of the South Caucasus, Turkey and Israel coincide in friendly relations with Azerbaijan, which are critical amid a potential war in neighboring Iran, by contrast in the Horn of Africa, Israel is active in breakaway Somalia, which it recently recognized, resulting in a rift with Turkey.
