In the contest for global influence, Iran has emerged as Washington’s most vulnerable pressure point and a strategic choice aimed not only at constraining Tehran’s nuclear ambitions but also at undermining the broader Sino-Russian axis. Yet while U.S. and Israeli strikes ratchet up the stakes, the real casualties may be the five landlocked republics of Central Asia.
This analysis by Eldaniz Gusseinov, a columnist for Daryo and a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Haydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies, unpacks Washington’s decision, explores the security-dilemma trap binding all parties, and highlights the very real economic and security shocks rippling through Central Asia, before closing with actionable measures these states can take to hedge against an increasingly volatile regional order.
Washington’s Logic: Strike the Weakest Link in the Beijing–Moscow–Tehran Triangle
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, Iran has become the fulcrum of U.S. strategy against its two principal competitors. In Washington’s calculus, the emergent PRC-RF-IRI axis threatens every strand of American global primacy: Chinese technology, Russian hard power, and Iranian geography together offer a self-reinforcing challenge that neither bilateral containment nor offshore balancing can easily tame. Yet the triad is asymmetrical. China and Russia are nuclear superpowers with diversified economies; Iran is sanction-strangled, sometimes internally brittle, and militarily outmatched in the air. By applying maximum pressure: first economic, then diplomatic, now increasingly kinetic, the United States targets the node least able to defend itself, hoping to inflict indirect costs on Beijing and Moscow.
Two mechanisms are at play. First, degrading Iran’s export capacity squeezes China’s energy supply (Tehran was still shipping roughly between 1 and 2 million barrels daily, over 90 percent of it to Chinese refiners). Disruptions force Beijing to pay risk premiums in an already fragile economy and undermine its promise to Belt-and-Road partners that Chinese corridors are crisis-proof. Second, every Israeli or U.S. strike that draws Iran deeper into war compels Moscow to choose between costly military aid it can ill afford and the reputational hit of abandoning a newly minted “strategic partner.” In other words, pressuring Tehran is an indirect tax on Chinese liquidity and Russian bandwidth.
Washington’s bet is that sustained pain inside Iran will echo through Chinese supply chains and Russian diplomacy long before it saps American resources. The rapid deployment of U.S. tanker assets to support Israeli sorties, while stopping short of a full-scale American air campaign, keeps the costs calibrated: just high enough to stress adversaries, not high enough to bog down the United States.
The Security Dilemma Trap: Why No Side Can Step Back
The problem, of course, is that coercion rarely remains tidy. The United States, Israel, and Iran are now locked in a classical security dilemma in which each defensive move is perceived as offensive by the other. For Israel, the mere existence of Iranian enrichment capability is a mortal threat; for Tehran, relinquishing that capability would invite regime-changecoercion the very next day. Washington’s insistence on “zero enrichment” is read in Tehran as proof that only the Islamic Republic’s demise will satisfy the United States, while Israeli leaders interpret every additional centrifuge as a countdown to their own strategic eclipse.
Even if back-channel talks produce a temporary pause, structural mistrust guarantees that the cycle will restart. Crucially, any eventual accommodation would still elevate U.S. influence in the Gulf: only American airpower and missile-defense networks can realistically guarantee cease-fire lines. Thus, a negotiated outcome merely reshapes the dilemma, it does not resolve it—Washington gains leverage whether bombs fall or diplomats shuttle.
Collateral Damage: Why Central Asia Stands to Lose
For the five Central Asian republics, the deepening Israel–Iran confrontation is all downside. Three vectors of risk stand out:
- Trade-route fragility. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan rely on Iranian ports, above all Bandar Abbas, as the southern gateway to global markets. Missile alerts in the Gulf, soaring insurance premiums, or a closure of the Strait of Hormuz can wipe out the cost advantages painstakingly built by the International North–South Transport Corridor.
- • Energy-price whiplash. Hydrocarbon exporters such as Kazakhstan may enjoy a short-term windfall from $110-plus oil, but volatility discourages long-term foreign investment and complicates domestic price controls. Import-dependent Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan suffer immediately through higher fuel and food costs.
- Security spill-over. Turkmenistan’s 1,150-kilometre border with Iran is a conduit for formal trade and, in crises, for illicit flows of weapons and refugees. Ashgabat’s chronic understaffing of border troops leaves downstream neighbours, especially Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, exposed to trans-border smuggling, radical networks, and public-health shocks.
Public opinion surveys already show tepid sympathy for Tehran across the region; governments therefore have political space to keep strict neutrality. But neutrality does not mitigate geography. The medium-term outlook is therefore negative: supply-chain diversification plans stall, regional growth models wobble, and the newfound optimism about Central Asia as an east-west and north-south “connector” gives way to risk aversion.
Moreover, trade between Central Asia is Iran relatively low and presents dependencies in some niche spheres like silk export mainly from Uzbekistan according to the International Trade Center.
In general, trade statistics reflect the instability and volatility of trade and economic relations between the countries of Central Asia and Iran, and the resolution of the conflict between Iran and Israel with the subsequent easing of the sanction’s regime could help the countries of Central Asia to increase trade and economic relations with both states with access to the markets of the Middle East and India.
Strategic Takeaways for Central Asia
Conclusion
Targeting Iran is Washington’s chosen lever to stress-test the Sino-Russian partnership. The lever is logical from a great-power vantage point: Tehran is the coalition’s most vulnerable member and the keystone of China’s Gulf energy calculus. Yet in the Eurasian middle belt, from the Caspian to the Tian Shan, this strategy manifests not as elegant geopolitics but as higher freight costs, jittery investors, and fragile borders. Central Asian leaders cannot alter the course of U.S.–Iranian confrontation, but they can undertake immediate measures to insulate their economies and societies from the collateral shocks of a conflict in which they have no stake yet bear significant risk.
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