James O’Brien, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state, asserted recently that Azerbaijan “won a great deal” while Armenia got no “substantial peace dividend” from the agreements brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on August 8. The deal will not necessarily resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and could actually “undermine the prospects for peace,” he said in an article published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think-tank.
“Mr. O'Brien was stripped of his top job as a result of President Trump's tenure, and he now needs to explain why President Trump's administration was able to do what they [the Biden administration] failed to do,” Pashinian told reporters when asked to comment on the article.
“If Mr. O'Brien is talking about Armenia's vulnerabilities, I must note that Armenia, unfortunately, was most vulnerable during his and their tenure,” he said. “I want to recall the events of 2023, 2022 and 2021, and I must say that we were never satisfied with the response and the work that the then U.S. administration did to support the peace agenda in our region.”
Pashinian and other Armenian leaders never publicly voiced such dissatisfaction during Biden’s presidency that saw repeated U.S. attempts to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. They on the contrary always praised those efforts.
In a July 2023 letter to Biden, Pashinian said: “We highly appreciate the position of the United States in supporting the territorial integrity, sovereignty and democracy of the Republic of Armenia, which was demonstrated in practice in 2021-2022.”
During Biden’s tenure, Pashinian’s administration expanded Armenia’s relationship with the United States amid a deepening rift with Russia. U.S.-Armenian ties were officially upgraded to “strategic partnership” with a document signed in Washington in January, just days before Trump’s inauguration.
The Biden administration strongly supported Pashinian and avoided any criticism of his controversial policies. The Armenian opposition increasingly accused the U.S. as well as the European Union of turning a blind eye to undemocratic practices and human rights abuses in Armenia for geopolitical reasons.
Opposition leaders are now just as critical of the agreements signed during Trump’s talks with Aliyev and Pashinian. Those include the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Also, Pashinian pledged to give the U. S. exclusive rights to a transit corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave that would pass through Armenia. Key practical modalities of that arrangement remain unknown.
In his article, O’Brien argued that Aliyev continues to make the signing of the treaty conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution planned by Pashinian. He warned that “this will be deeply unpopular in Armenia and will hurt Pashinian further” ahead of the next Armenian elections due in June 2026.
“In short, the U.S. paid up front while Aliyev only had to reiterate peace assurances he has offered many times before,” wrote the former U.S. official.