Top officials from Trump’s administration make direct diplomatic overtures to Azerbaijan

In the past few days, top officials from US President Donald Trump’s administration have made direct diplomatic overtures to Azerbaijan, including a visit over the weekend from special envoy Steve Witkoff to Baku and a phone call between US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his Azerbaijani counterpart Hikmat Hajiyev.

The moves come in the aftermath of an announcement that Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed to sign a historic peace treaty.

Details about Witkoff’s visit were scant, with the bulk of news regarding his trip stemming from the Russian state-run media outlet RIA Novosti, which only reported that Witkoff had flown from Moscow, where he reportedly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to Baku.

It is unclear whether Witkoff met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev or other top officials, and it is unknown what issues, if any, were discussed. Nonetheless, there was speculation that the visit could have been related to a growing ‘strategic alliance’ between the US, Azerbaijan, and Israel.

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Waltz was more detailed in his comments about the call with Hajiyev.

‘We are pleased Azerbaijan and Armenia have taken a big step forward and agreed to a peace treaty. I told him we should finalise this peace deal now, release the prisoners, and work together to make the region more secure and prosperous’, Waltz wrote on X.

‘America’s Golden Age will bring peace and prosperity to the world, and we won’t stop working until that happens’, he concluded.

There were numerous critical responses to his post from Armenians and Armenian lobbying organisations, including the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), which said the agreement to sign a peace treaty was ‘a one-sided surrender of Armenian security and sovereignty forced on Yerevan at the point of a gun’.

Others responded more favourably, such as Jared Genser, the lawyer  representing former Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, who is on trial in Azerbaijan.

Genser thanked Waltz and Trump, saying he appreciated their ‘commitment to peace in the Caucausus [sic] and for not just a peace treaty to be signed but for the release of the Armenian Christian political prisoners in Azerbaijan, including my client Ruben Vardanyan!’.

Separately, Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan said that he ‘hope(s) that this statement will be followed by clear steps and that it's not just a statement for the sake of a statement. I don’t know, let them call, come to an agreement on how they will return our captives, our people, everyone without discrimination, regardless of when they were captured’.

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