One year ago, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia sat down in Washington and signed a framework that most analysts had given little chance of surviving. On Saturday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan got on the phone to mark the occasion — and the Azerbaijani presidency confirmed both men noted "progress in normalizing relations" over the past twelve months. In the careful language of post-conflict diplomacy, that is close to a standing ovation.

The call was short on drama and long on symbolism. Both sides have strong incentives to project stability. For Pashinyan, who accepted terms after the catastrophic fall of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, the peace process is his central political justification — the argument that painful concessions bought Armenia something durable. For Aliyev, a completed peace treaty locks in territorial gains and opens the door to international investment and rehabilitation after years of sanctions pressure and Western criticism over the conduct of military operations.

What neither leader mentioned publicly — but what hangs over the entire process — is the financial architecture the United States has quietly constructed around the deal. The U.S. State Department, through Secretary Marco Rubio, formally marked the anniversary by highlighting the Trans-Caspian Regional Infrastructure and Peace Program, known as TRIPP. The program, which Washington allocated $201 million to develop, is designed to bind the two countries together through shared economic corridors — specifically the so-called Middle Corridor connecting Central Asia to Europe through the Caucasus, bypassing both Russia and Iran.

That routing is not incidental. TRIPP is as much a geopolitical instrument as an economic one. Washington has spent years trying to reduce Russian and Iranian leverage over Caucasus transit routes, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process hands it a rare opening. A functional land corridor through both countries, connecting the Caspian to Turkey and onward to European markets, would be a significant strategic asset — one that justifies the investment regardless of whether Yerevan and Baku ever achieve genuine reconciliation.

The European Union, for its part, has also formally welcomed the anniversary, noting progress in what Brussels has framed as a historic shift after three decades of frozen conflict. The EU has its own interest in the Middle Corridor, particularly since the war in Ukraine made overland routes through Russia functionally unusable for European trade. There is a striking convergence of Western institutional enthusiasm for a peace deal that is — let's be precise — still unsigned in final form, still contested on border demarcation details, and still capable of unraveling.

None of that means the progress is fake. Border commissions have met. Some checkpoints have opened. Trade contacts that were severed for a generation have been cautiously reopened. Aliyev sent a formal letter to U.S. President Donald Trump this week, a move that reads as Baku signaling it intends to stay engaged with Washington's framework rather than pivot back toward Russia or China as primary interlocutors. The letter's content has not been made public, but its timing — on the process anniversary — was not accidental.

The harder question is what happens if the final peace treaty stalls. Several sticking points remain, including the precise legal status of remaining border segments and what, if any, transit arrangements Armenia must guarantee Azerbaijan through Armenian territory to reach the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan. That last point — the so-called Zangezur Corridor — has been one of the most explosive issues in the negotiation, with Yerevan resistant to any arrangement that could look like a sovereignty concession and Baku insisting on reliable access. Neither side raised that issue publicly on Saturday.

What the anniversary phone call actually demonstrates is that the process has not collapsed — which, given the history, is genuinely notable. Three wars in thirty years, a final blitz campaign in September 2023 that ended with the complete dissolution of the ethnic Armenian enclave, and a domestic political climate in Armenia where the peace deal remains controversial: the fact that Pashinyan and Aliyev are still speaking, and that Washington is still writing checks, is a data point worth taking seriously. Whether it is the foundation of a lasting regional settlement or an expensive holding pattern dressed up in anniversary language is a question the next twelve months will begin to answer.