PSCRP-BESA Reports No 186 (February 26, 2026)
The February 2026 visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance to Yerevan and Baku — the first time a sitting American vice president has set foot in either country — marks the consolidation of a deliberate strategic reorientation. Washington is moving to establish a durable presence in the South Caucasus at a moment when Russia’s credibility as a regional security patron has collapsed and Iran’s leverage over transit routes is under pressure. For Armenia, long considered Moscow’s most reliable client in the region, the moment is one of unusual and consequential opportunity.
A Region Re-Entered
For much of the post-Cold War period, the South Caucasus received little sustained American strategic attention. The Obama and Biden administrations treated it as “a diplomatic backwater of frozen conflicts and declining American leverage”. That approach left the field to Moscow, which used Armenia’s unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan over Karabakh as its primary lever of regional influence. The dynamic shifted decisively in 2020 and again in 2023, when Azerbaijan re-established full control over Karabakh. For Russia, whose peacekeeping forces stood by passively, the episode severely damaged its standing as a security guarantor. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has observed, it settled the question that had long shaped Armenian strategic calculus: relying on Moscow had been, in the words of Armenia’s own Security Council chief, a “strategic mistake”.
The Trump administration moved into this vacuum. In August 2025, it brokered a framework peace declaration signed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the White House. The Vance trip to Yerevan and Baku in February 2026 was designed to translate that diplomatic opening into concrete institutional commitments. In Yerevan, Vance and Pashinyan signed a 123 Agreement — the legal framework for U.S. nuclear technology and equipment transfers — with associated project values potentially reaching $9 billion. Washington also announced an $11 million sale of V-BAT surveillance drones, readiness to export advanced computer chips, and investment in Armenian infrastructure. In Baku, a Charter on Strategic Partnership formalized cooperation across energy, cybersecurity, and defense. Taken together, these commitments signal an American intention to embed itself in the region’s strategic infrastructure for the long term.
Moscow’s Countermoves: Oligarchs, the Church, and Hybrid Pressure
Russia’s response to Armenia’s westward reorientation has followed a pattern now recognizable across the post-Soviet periphery. Analysts at Re: Russia describe a Kremlin strategy built around consolidating a Russia-based oligarch as the public face of opposition to a pro-Western government — a model that succeeded in Georgia and failed in Moldova, with Armenia now the third test case. The figure at the center of this effort is linked to the network of Samvel Karapetyan, an Armenian-Russian billionaire whose holdings in Armenia’s energy sector were subsequently nationalized by the Pashinyan government. His nephew, Nareg Karapetyan, was given a platform in early 2026 by U.S. commentator Tucker Carlson, in what Carnegie Europe analyst Thomas de Waal described as an attempt to give a Kremlin-aligned opposition candidacy a degree of Western legitimacy.
A second lever is the Armenian Apostolic Church. Pashinyan has publicly raised concerns about senior Church prelates acting in the interests of a foreign power — language widely understood in Armenia to mean Russia. The Church’s deep association with national identity and historical survival makes it a particularly resonant channel for political messaging, one that economic or partisan instruments cannot easily replicate. Russia has also employed more coercive tools: the Kremlin reportedly backed coup attempts against Pashinyan in 2024 and 2025, and Russian state television has run sustained destabilization campaigns, including calls by propagandist Vladimir Solovyov for a “special military operation” in Armenia. The Armenian Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in response. Yet Moscow’s fundamental problem remains: it can no longer offer Armenia the one thing that historically justified the relationship — a credible security guarantee. The strategic partnership is functionally over.
The Iranian Dimension
Iran has a distinct but parallel interest in preventing U.S. consolidation in the South Caucasus. For years, Armenia served as Tehran’s most useful northern neighbor — a state that provided an alternative land corridor when other routes were sanctioned or contested. The transit corridor envisaged under the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), linking Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenian territory, would substantially reduce Iran’s chokehold on regional trade. As analysis in Stars and Stripes notes, Tehran has been explicit in its opposition to arrangements that would bring Turkish and Western influence closer to its borders. Kamran Bokhari, writing in Forbes, argues that Azerbaijan functions in the Trump administration’s regional calculus as a platform for managing Iran from the north, simultaneously complicating Tehran’s logistics and anchoring U.S. influence in a corridor connecting the Caspian to Europe. Iran’s current period of internal fragility makes this an especially opportune moment for Washington to press its advantages.
Conditions for Success
The strategic investments of February 2026 are substantial, but their durability is not assured. Armenia faces parliamentary elections in June 2026, and while Pashinyan has no serious domestic rival, his vulnerabilities are external: a well-funded opposition backed by diaspora nationalism and Russian interests, and a peace process that must deliver visible dividends before the vote. As Carnegie’s Garo Paylan has written, without tangible economic and security benefits, the political space for compromise in Yerevan will narrow quickly and hardline forces will exploit the gap. The broader Eurasian context is nonetheless favorable. Bokhari’s analysis in Forbes frames the current moment as a “Great Eurasian Realignment” in which Russia’s overextension in Ukraine is opening space for American re-engagement across the region, a view echoed by Colonel Wes Martin, who argues in Newsmax that America’s regional partners are actively welcoming this shift.
Congress can reinforce this momentum by removing two legislative anachronisms: Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act, which restricts direct U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan, and the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which applies Cold War-era trade restrictions to non-market economies that no longer exist. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for Jackson-Vanik’s repeal. Stephen Blank has argued that both measures now function as obstacles to American statecraft at precisely the moment when that statecraft is most needed.
The South Caucasus is no longer a marginal theater. Russia’s leverage is eroding, Iran’s is constrained, and Armenia’s government has made a clear strategic choice. Whether that choice holds will depend on the peace process delivering results, on Washington maintaining its engagement beyond the diplomatic moment, and on Congress clearing the legislative path. The window is open; it will not remain so indefinitely.