Interview with Ms. Amy Carlon, Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in the Republic of Azerbaijan, for AZERTAC

- How do you assess the current state of political dialogue between the United States and Azerbaijan? It is not accidental that during his address to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2025 President Ilham Aliyev noted that the Washington summit held on August 8 marked the beginning of a new phase in Azerbaijan-U.S. relations. In your view, following the meeting between President Ilham Aliyev and President Donald Trump in Washington and the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the United States, what are the main opportunities and challenges for bilateral cooperation?

- So, I arrived in Azerbaijan in June 2025. During these seven months, it has truly been a privilege to see the rapid development of U.S.-Azerbaijan relations. Of course, the defining moment during this period was the August 8 summit, where President Trump invited President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan to Washington, and they signed a series of historic agreements. First and foremost, of course, was the initialing of the peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Second, we saw the agreement on the TRIPP, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. This issue was an important part of the Joint Declaration.

And third, and very significant for the U.S. here, was an agreement on a bilateral partnership to establish strategic cooperation going forward. We signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Azerbaijan that lays the framework for our future cooperation.

In the past seven months, we've already seen the benefits of these agreements. And on December 19th, officials from our governments participated in the first Working Group, to further discussions about our strategic partnership charter and to define our cooperation going ahead. The new relationship resulting from August 8th has also brought about opportunities for U.S. businesses. And I've spoken to a number of U.S. companies who are excited by the opportunities here, and this is going to be a real focus of our relationship going forward with Azerbaijan. And I’d just to like to add that U.S. companies lead the world in innovation and technology, and we want to be able to bring those opportunities here to Azerbaijan for the mutual prosperity of our two countries. Thank you.

- The Washington Summit was a positive development that attracted global attention. On that day at the White House, with the participation of the leaders of the United States, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia initialed the draft peace agreement, while the President of Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia signed a joint statement, witnessed by President Donald Trump. Numerous statements and assessments have already been made regarding the significance of these developments. We would also welcome your perspective as the U.S. charge d'affaires ad interim to Azerbaijan on their importance.

- First of all, the August 8th summit and the initiative put forward by President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan in the presence of President Donald Trump clearly represent the best opportunity for peace in the South Caucasus in over three decades.

This is a historic achievement, and the United States is very proud to be part of this. At the same time, the MoU for our strategic partnership that was signed by President Trump and President Aliyev in August is also a huge opportunity to take our relationship forward, especially in the economic realm.

Since August 8th, we've been actively identifying and developing new opportunities to collaborate on things like AI, digital infrastructure, security, and counterterrorism. And it's really exciting, I think, for both of our countries to see these new opportunities. As evidence of our forward momentum and the cooperation, we've seen a large number of visits on both sides.

So from the Azerbaijani side, I think, you know we've had the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Education, Economy, Digital Development and Transport, Energy, and also a defense and security delegation to the United States. On the U.S. side, I actually have a whole list of visitors because it's huge. Since August, we had a business delegation that came through in September. They stopped in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to talk about the Middle Corridor. We had the State Department's Senior Bureau Official for European and Eurasian Affairs, Brendan Hanrahan. We had the Special Envoy for Peace Missions, Aryeh Lightstone.

We had the Commander of Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, and many more from the United States State Department, one of the highest-level visitors was our Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Alison Hooker. And she came together with the Federal Communications Commissioner. They led a large U.S. delegation to the International Telecommunications Union Conference that was here in Baku, that Azerbaijan very successfully hosted. And significantly, we also welcomed leaders of the Oklahoma National Guard back to restart their partnership that's been going on for decades in the military and security sector. So as you can tell, there's significant interest from the United States in Azerbaijan.

And already in 2026, we're off to a great start. President Aliyev very graciously welcomed a congressional delegation on January 4th. He noted it was his first official meeting of the year. We had a congressional delegation from the U.S. led by Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. It was a bipartisan delegation, and they were very interested in expanding our bilateral relationship.

I’d also like to add that our Azerbaijani partners have been extremely gracious and hospitable in welcoming the U.S. side.

And I've personally talked to the U.S. visitors, and so many of them have said how impressed they were with their visits and told me of their intention to come back again. And I think the year 2026 will be a year with more U.S. visitors coming, and we expect many more in the months ahead. And that's great for the U.S.-Azerbaijan relationship.

- As the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Azerbaijan, how do you assess the important messages delivered by President Ilham Aliyev from the UN rostrum in the context of today's global challenges?

- So we were delighted that President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan both talked about the August 8th summit. They talked about the historic agreements when they spoke to the United Nations in New York last year. I think it really speaks to the optimism that people have, and the hope that all of our countries share for the future of the region, and again, the prospects for lasting peace, which we're already seeing being implemented. We were also really pleased that President Aliyev mentioned our Memorandum of Understanding and the upgrading of the bilateral relationship.

And of course, regional energy security and regional connectivity are also issues that are really important to us, so we were happy to see those mentioned as well.

- Cargo flows from several parts of Azerbaijan are now reaching Armenia, with the transport corridors reopened and Azerbaijani petroleum products being exported to Armenia. We would appreciate your perspective on the significance of these developments for regional cooperation.

- Yes, we welcome and applaud these recent efforts by the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia to restore trade ties. These are significant confidence-building measures that signal both sides are really committed to the peace agreement that they initialed in front of President Trump on August 8th. And restoring trade and transportation routes will obviously have an enormous positive effect for the whole region and on both countries' economies.

So again, we really welcome and applaud these efforts so far.

- In your opinion, what are the key economic advantages of the Zangezur Corridor, the TRIPP route, for the South Caucasus region, including Azerbaijan, particularly in terms of increased transit potential, job creation, and logistics development?

- So the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or the TRIPP, is a revolutionary project that few people thought was possible before August 8th. And thanks to the efforts of President Trump, the TRIPP was a key piece that helped overcome obstacles, we think, to the peace agreement being initialed.

So I’d like to underscore that this is a historic agreement. And we envision TRIPP as a fully multimodal transit area that connects the main part of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan for the first time in 30 years. So this will enable both international and interstate connectivity and will have a massive economic impact for the whole region as well as for both countries.

So we believe that the TRIPP has the potential to really supercharge regional connectivity and help Azerbaijan to fulfil its vision of becoming a hub for this region and really enable improved transit between Central Asia and Western European countries.

- What are the main priorities for the U.S.-Azerbaijan economic cooperation in 2026 and the years ahead?

- In our memorandum of understanding, we outlined a few areas for cooperation, and many of these have an economic focus. So the three priorities that we talked about in our MoU are connectivity, and that includes energy and transport.

Second, trade and investment, two-way trade and investment. And under that category, we would include things like AI, cyber, and other areas of mutual interest. And then there’s also defense and security, which could also have some economic components involved with it.

So we have been working closely with the government of Azerbaijan to build out some more specifics in terms of our strategic cooperation and what we'd like to see under our charter. And some of those visits that I mentioned have had an economic focus. So I can say that just a few days ago, in fact, we had visitors here from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. They had meetings at the Ministries of Digital Development and Transport, Economy, Energy, and Foreign Affairs, and talked about projects of mutual interest where we could be involved together. They described their meetings to me as terrific and came away with some interesting project ideas. We're still working through the specifics of that, but we are looking for ideas that will bring mutual prosperity to our countries, things that are linked to the TRIPP, if possible.

- How does the United States support ExxonMobil's initiatives to apply advanced technologies aimed at increasing production efficiency in Azerbaijan?

We're really excited about the opportunities for ExxonMobil. On the sidelines of the August 8th meetings, President Aliyev and Steve Witkoff, who's the Special Envoy for Peace Missions, witnessed the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between ExxonMobil and SOCAR. And as part of the MoU, Exxon is evaluating the potential development of onshore oil and gas resources in Azerbaijan. And this is really exciting. We can't wait to hear how this goes. They're still working through the evaluation, but we're really excited about the prospects for ExxonMobil's onshore exploration here. And we fully support it.

We fully support ExxonMobil's efforts, as well as all U.S. companies who are looking to do business here in the energy and the non-energy sectors.

- Within the framework of Azerbaijan's economic diversification efforts, what steps are being taken to encourage increased U.S. investment in non-oil sectors?

So the U.S. government's economic cooperation tools are not a handout. They are meant to spur and catalyze private sector activity to support mutual economic gains. That's our approach. And so we are going to rely heavily on our dynamic U.S. private sector and the U.S. private sector companies to implement the economic components of the August 8th agreements. And many of the priorities under our strategic partnership and memorandum on cooperation are in non-oil sectors.

We already talked a little bit about AI, transportation, logistics, digital cooperation, defense and security. All of these things are outside of the energy sphere. So we will be working in these sectors.

I think there's also some potential other areas that I've seen while I've been on the ground here the last seven months. I could point to things like real estate, finance, tourism, and agriculture as other potential areas of cooperation. In the end, it's really up to Azerbaijan to make the conditions attractive for U.S. investors to want to come here. And we will do everything we can to support that.

- Are there plans to expand the participation of the U.S. companies in Azerbaijan's green energy transition projects, particularly in wind and solar energy?

- So, the United States has the world's strongest and most innovative energy sector. And our new MoU includes energy cooperation as one of its key pillars.

And so we look forward to increased cooperation between U.S. and Azerbaijani companies. And I would say, wherever there are projects for U.S. companies, where they could make money, where they see that they could invest and share their advanced technology, we're going to be supportive of their participation.

- How are the prospects for the U.S.-Azerbaijan cooperation in transportation and logistics assessed within the framework of the Middle Corridor?

- I think the prospects are very good. As I mentioned before, we're looking to connect some of our investments with the TRIPP. That makes sense from our perspective. And we've long supported economic integration in the region, especially in the energy sector.

The business delegation that I mentioned that came in September was specifically focused on the Middle Corridor and on transportation and logistics. So that's an example of us bringing U.S. companies here to specifically look at those sectors to see where their opportunities are. And frankly, I think we're going to see more and more private sector visitors here and be able to identify more opportunities in this area.

- How does the United States support the digital transformation of Azerbaijan's economy? Are there plans to attract U.S. information technology companies and venture investors to this sector? Given U.S. expertise in artificial intelligence, what potential cooperation projects with Azerbaijan are being considered in this area?

- Yes, this is definitely an area of focus for us. As I mentioned, it's specifically an area that we mentioned in our Memorandum of Understanding. And I know, I've heard from interlocutors here that Azerbaijan is eager to work with U.S. companies.

And because we have the best technology in the world to do so, we want to bring it here as well. We are the worldwide leaders on AI, cyber, and digital. And so we want to come here as well.

In fact, just this morning, I had a chance to meet with the Minister of Digital Development and Transport and we talked about his recent trip to Washington in December. He was not only in Washington, but also in California. I really think that the prospects for cooperation there are endless.

It's up to U.S. companies, of course, to ultimately decide if this is a place where they want to invest.

But one of the goals of the Embassy is to show them the opportunities here and to support those efforts. I've heard from numerous ministries about the possibilities, for example, for a cloud data hub, data centers, due to the abundant energy resources here, including electricity. So these are some of the opportunities that we're going to examine in the coming months.

- How can American businesses participate in the reconstruction and development of Azerbaijan's liberated territories? Are there already concrete projects or examples of such cooperation?

- I had the opportunity, together with some other members of the diplomatic corps, to travel to Fuzuli, Jabrayil city, Zangilan city, and some other locations in October. And I was really impressed by the progress that I saw there towards reconstruction. During that time, we were able to see airports, and the progress that's been done on the railways, the highways.

We saw mosques that had been reconstructed and other infrastructure that was really built from scratch. I was so impressed to see that myself, as well as the tremendous work that's been done despite the challenges with demining and the other challenges that are presented there.

U.S. companies have technical expertise in every conceivable field you could think of, including engineering and infrastructure. As we have more U.S. visitors coming to Azerbaijan, I think this really just increases the chances that we're going to have these kinds of investments here. It's our goal to just keep building and identifying these opportunities for economic cooperation.

- And the final question is, amid global inflationary pressures and market volatility, which forms of financial and economic cooperation between the United States and Azerbaijan are considered the most sustainable and promising?

- I think our MoU provides an excellent basis for further economic cooperation because it's very broad. It covers three specific sectors, but it really covers a broad range of topics, everything from connectivity to defense and security to things like digital development, AI, and cyber. So I think that really the framework that we've laid out in the MoU is a strong basis for future cooperation.

It also notes that we would cooperate not only bilaterally, but also regionally on economic trade cooperation. So I think that gives us a good basis for cooperation.