It may not be the Panama Canal, but the “Trump Bridge” could be a deal for this century. With Russia distracted by Ukraine and Iran licking its wounds, the Trump administration wants to step into a rare power vacuum in the south Caucasus. Under a 100-year lease, an American private military company would run a 26-mile east-west road, rail, and pipeline corridor. The goal is to speed goods between Central Asia and Europe.

Advocated by President Trump’s new ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, this proposal could cut a Gordian knot that has tied up the region since the end of the Cold War. Until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, trains ran regularly between Muslim Azerbaijan through Christian Armenia and an Azerbaijan exclave on Turkey’s eastern border.

Today, the reopening and modernizing of this land link, known as the Zangezur Corridor, has the backing of regional heavyweights: Europe, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Turkic nations of Central Asia. In contrast, Russia and Iran are crying bloody murder. They say it would threaten their north-south trade and place American forces on Iran’s northern border, threatening the “Axis of Resistance.”  

This week, Iran said it is moving troops north. From the north, Russia is flying military cargo into its base at Gyumri, Armenia. “Military interference from Iran and Russia is a growing possibility as Armenia and Azerbaijan move out of Moscow’s orbit while Moscow and Tehran simultaneously expand military cooperation,” a former CIA analyst, Paul Goble, wrote yesterday in his Eurasia Daily Monitor. 

After enduring American and Israeli bombings last month, Iran says that armed Americans on its northern border would cross its red line. “The United States and Israel are aiming to harm Iran’s national security through the so-called ‘Zangezur Corridor’ project,” a senior foreign policy advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Akbar Velayati, declared Sunday during a ceremony at Tehran. “The real objective is to weaken the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ to sever Iran’s link with the Caucasus, and to impose a land blockade on Iran and Russia.”

In this “Great Game,” a prime player is President Erdogan of Turkey. He dreams of a “pan-Turkic” bridge that would link Turkey, through Azerbaijan, to the Turkic-speaking peoples on the far side of the Caspian Sea. Europe is excited about the prospect of having a new source of non-Russian oil and gas. Meanwhile, as diplomats talk, Azerbaijani engineers are building highways and railroads from both sides. They steadily approach the 26-mile Armenian gap.

Caught in the middle is Armenia, which benefits from trade with Iran, and does not want to give up sovereignty of its southern Syunik province. After losing a three-day war with Azerbaijan in 2020, Armenia is deeply suspicious of that country.

“Armenia does not have much room for maneuver,” a former Armenian ambassador to America, Grigor Hovhannissian, wrote Monday in the Washington Times. “A real ‘corridor’ through Syunik would weaken its geopolitical position by cutting it off from Iran, redraw the south Caucasus, and constitute unbearable further encroachment.”

However, Turkey’s president is dangling a peace accord, an end to Armenia’s isolation, and access to Turkey’s $1.4 trillion economy. In a month of breakthroughs, Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, visited Turkey earlier this month to meet with Mr. Erdogan. It was the first such visit since Ottoman Turks killed as many as a million Armenians in 1915-17. Then, on July 10, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met at Abu Dhabi. 

Mistrust is mutual and acute.

“Our cargo and citizens should not see the face of an Armenian border guard there every time,” Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, said July 19 at Shusha, capital of the region seized by Azeri forces in 2020. Estimating that annual cargo could quickly hit 15 million tons, he said: “There must be smooth and unrestricted passage from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan, without any inspections or obstacles. This is our demand.”

For most of the 20th century,  Pax Sovietica ensured trade and travel between the two mutually hostile peoples. As recently as 2020, both countries signed a peace treaty that stipulated that east-west border traffic would be controlled by Russian security agents. Since then, Russia’s grip on the region has weakened. In the two former Soviet republics, rhetoric increasingly is bitter against the former colonial power.

“What happened, Mr. Putin? Are you so worried that Azerbaijan has become a strong state, has returned lands, restored sovereignty, defended its interests, and that President Ilham Aliyev is recognized globally?” Azerbaijani state TV taunted this summer. “You are used to dominating peoples forcibly, including in Russia. Whether Tsarist or Soviet times, Russians were the master race. Others were second-class. Though those empires are gone, the mindset persists.”

In Armenia, the speaker of parliament, Alen Simonyan, recently called for banning Russian TV channels from Armenia. He denounced Mr. Putin’s favorite Kremlin propagandist, Margarita Simonyan (no relation), as a “disgusting creature from a freak show.” He said she “meddles in the affairs of a sovereign country, insults its leadership, tries to fuel protests and lies.”

From London, a Russia financial analyst, Timothy Ash, writes that the Turkish-American corridor project represents “another huge defeat for Russia.” He adds: “Because Russia has been bogged down in the war in Ukraine it has been unable to use military force to defend its interests in the South Caucasus.”

With Moscow retreating, Washington and Ankara see an opening. For the White House, the point man is Mr. Barrack, a friend and fundraiser for Mr. Trump for at least three decades. A self-made billionaire of Lebanese descent, the 76-year-old Mr. Barrack has experience in getting deals done. In a measure of the president’s confidence in him, Mr. Barrack is twin-hatted, also holding the post of America’s special envoy for Syria.

“They’re arguing over 32 kilometers of road, but this is no joke. It’s been going on for a decade,” Mr. Barrack told reporters in New York on July 11, referring to a strip of Armenia land that is actually 43  kilometers long. “So what happens is America comes in and says, ‘Okay, we’ll take it over. Give us the 32 kilometers of road on a hundred-year lease, and you can all share it.’”

Much like the minerals deal with Ukraine, the Trump administration sees a commercial aspect to this diplomacy. To guarantee transparency and neutrality, an American logistics company would manage and monitor cargo transit along the route. The military component would be kept low profile.

Azerbaijan’s Mr. Aliyev is encouraging. Without getting into details, he said last week: “I wish to underscore our support for President Trump’s vision and efforts to promote peace and stability around the world, including in our region.”

In contrast, Iran clings to the status quo. On Monday, the state-controlled Tehran Times warned: “It appears that a military confrontation would be unavoidable should Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the U.S. persist in pursuing these plans.”

To some Westerners, Iran and Russia are weakened powers that resort to bluffing. Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump may have gotten ahead of himself when he told reporters: “And we’ve solved another one: Armenia and Azerbaijan. It looks like that’s going to come to a conclusion — a successful conclusion.” Sharing some of this optimism, Mr. Ash posts from London on X: “An Armenia–Azerbaijan deal where the U.S. manages the Zangezur corridor is still the easiest way for Trump to get his prized Nobel Peace Prize.”