I believe that the TRIPP project will be implemented. Work on it is already underway, and, most likely, the railway will be restored. Thomas de Waal, a leading researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Caucasus issues, stated this on the air of Armenian News-NEWS.am’s "Factor of Power" program.

According to him, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev simultaneously decided to abandon the November 9, 2020 trilateral statement because they were afraid that Russia would use its point 9 as leverage against both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“And the most convenient place in the world to abandon it is the White House. Therefore, the parties decided to turn that project from Russian into American,” de Waal added.

"The Americans believe that Russian companies can also use the Trump Route, but they make it clear that this is now their plan. Both the US and Europe understand that Russia's influence in the region has significantly weakened compared to five to ten years ago. Russia has lost its leverage over both Armenia and Azerbaijan, which happened during the Karabakh conflict," the analyst said.

But de Waal does not believe that Iran is the main factor for the US in the implementation of this project.

"There will be an American company, there will be American infrastructure there [i.e. along the Trump Route], but the Americans themselves will not be there, with the exception of a few people. Security will be provided by a private, perhaps not even American, but a European company, as well as Armenian border guards," Thomas de Waal noted.