RSS
March 2023 will be remembered as a good month for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
First, Iran and longtime foe, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, announced they would re-establish full diplomatic relations and reopen embassies within sixty days, thanks to China’s mediation (and Iraq’s and Oman’s early efforts). The news was followed by the Saudi finance minister who said Saudi Arabia could start investing in Iran “very quickly.” Days later, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman invited Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, to visit the kingdom; Iran promptly accepted
Also in March, Iran formalized ties with the Taliban government in Afghanistan by turning over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to diplomats from the Taliban. Syria, Iran’s ally, which is close to rejoining the Arab League and the mainstream of the Arab world, marked an official visit by President Bashar Assad to the United Arab Emirates. (Arab leaders have offered Assad billions of dollars in reconstruction aid if he will “ask Iran to stop expanding its footprint in the nation.”) And, Saudi Arabia, which funded the opposition to Assad, reversed course and announced it will re-open its embassy in Damascus.
Last, the foreign minister of the Republic of Uzbekistan met Iran’s ministers of Foreign Affairs, and Industry, Mines and Trade, and the parties announced efforts to double trade turnover to $1 billion, and to foster business links and people-to-people ties. The ministerial meetings were the follow-on to the September 2022 sit-down between Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Iran’s Raisi where they concluded 17 agreements in areas such as energy, transport, and agriculture, and discussed how to double trade from the current $500 million annually.
Iran is within sight of securing calm on its eastern and western flanks, its ally Assad is winning, and Riyadh and Tehran have committed to ending the war in Yemen. Tehran’s security forces have taken control of the streets after the recent protests, and the government may now be able to focus on economic growth (and reform) to secure its position, and execute Raisi’s policy of increased engagement with Asia. Time is not on the side of the Tehran government as officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recently warned Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of declining morale in the Guards and their concerns about corruption in the higher tanks.
Iran is increasingly attractive to the landlocked Central Asian republics that are seeking redundant trade routes.
In June 2021, Tashkent hosted a conference to highlight Central Asia-South Asia connectivity via Afghanistan and Pakistan (Plan A). Two months later, the U.S. and NATO retreated from Afghanistan and the country plunged in chaos, so the republics had to consider alternatives. In February 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war forced Kazakhstan to develop a trans-Caspian route to avoid the effects of the Russian-Ukraine war, and the other republics followed suit.
Central Asia can now consider trading through Iran’s ports of Chabahar and Bandar Abbas. (In January 2022, Iran and Uzbekistan concluded an agreement to give Uzbekistan access to Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman.) Iran can offer a space free of the violence by the Islamic State (IS) and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) that plagues Afghanistan and Pakistan, organized and functioning government agencies, and ports adjacent to the markets of India (Chabahar) and the Persian Gulf (Bandar Abbas). Iran is also a large market of almost 90 million people.
Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan, has publicly engaged the Taliban since 2018 and has supported regional projects to connect Afghanistan to its neighbors such as the TAPI natural gas pipeline, the CASA-1000 power project, and the rehabilitation of the Afghan rail network. In early 2021, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan announced a 600-kilometer railroad through Afghanistan, but the project faces financial and geographic obstacles, now all the more difficult given the desire of the West to isolate the Taliban and force them from power.
Regardless of Central Asia’s labors on Afghanistan’s behalf, the agreements with Tehran are a signal to Kabul that the republics’ patience is limited and that it must re-start state institutions that facilitate trade, and must quell violence by the Islamic State in the north of the country – near the borders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
And this isn’t just outsiders talking to Kabul: recently Mullah Yacub, the Afghan Minister of Defense, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, Minister of the Interior, warned Hibatullah Akhundzada, Afghanistan’s supreme leader that reforms must be quickly forthcoming or else there would be “consequences.”
The West would prefer to wait out the Taliban as it is preoccupied fighting Russia in Ukraine, but “time is money” and Central Asia can’t dawdle as is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, grappling with inflation and a fall in remittance income from guest workers in Russia, and is bracing for a worldwide financial crisis again, as in the 2007-2008 crisis, caused by a failed U.S. financial institution.
In addition to a well-developed internal transport system, Iran also hosts the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 kilometer ship, rail, and road route for moving freight between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe. The INSTC is considered “sanction proof” and is claimed to be “30 percent cheaper and 40 percent shorter than the traditional route via the Suez Canal.”
There will be long faces in some quarters, but Iran is positioned to be a significant regional transport hub even if Afghanistan manages to become a satisfactory entrepôt for Central Asia.
In 2021, Iran and China announced a twenty-five-year $400 billion strategic and economic partnership that included oil, gas, petrochemical, renewables, nuclear power, energy infrastructure, port construction, and high-technology and military cooperation. The agreement was more a statement of intent than a binding agreement, and it was considered fanciful as Iran would have to absorb an average of $16 billion per year.
But, if Iran’s flanks are peaceful, its attractiveness as a transport corridor will increase, aided by Saudi and Chinese (and other) investment. And Chinese participation may offer a measure of security against gratuitous Israeli attacks as Tel Aviv will have to consider Beijing’s reaction to raids that kill Chinese workers or damage Chinese investments.
The Central Asian republics, independent for the first time in almost 200 years, are trying to balance between the U.S., Europe, Russia, China, and Turkey.
Iran will be next because, like most big countries, it tends to not notice when it is bumping into the furniture. That said, there is no antagonism between the republics and Iran and one of them, Tajikistan, has a 25-year military cooperation agreement with Iran and hosts a drone factory in the capital of Dushanbe.
The Islamic Republic is, well, an Islamic republic, and will be engaging with secular Central Asian republics that may share the same religion but, given their 20th century history, are averse to unwanted influence from a foreign power center or political Islamist movements.
A recent example: the Islamic Renaissance Party in Tajikistan that opposed the secular government in a 1990’s civil war that killed 150,00 people and displaced one-tenth of the population. And while Iran may think it is the leading Muslim state, Central Asia can make a claim to being Islam’s true heartland and won’t feel it must defer to the larger neighbor in matters of faith.
In early March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to meet his opposite numbers in Central Asia. The successful trip was heralded for a “new approach” because, for once, Washington isn’t asking for assistance in its Afghanistan campaign, and says it wants to help the republics achieve balance in their relations with each other, and with the outside world (though it may not have occurred to Mr. Blinken that some of that balancing may be against Washington.)
Aside from its economic heft, America’s advantage is that is in interested in the region but is not too close for comfort.
It should encourage regional trade, as the republics will best be able to balance among their big neighbors if they have money, and a lot of it, though, as Temur Umarov points out, the just-announced Russia-China policy on Central Asia “will complicate Central Asia’s multi-vector foreign policies.”
In the wake of NATO’s retreat from the Hindu Kush, Eurasia may start to self-organize, a process that Washington and Brussels won’t always agree with but which is grounded in shared culture and history dating back a millennium, whereas Washington has only paid attention to the area from the afternoon of 11 September 2001.
The challenge for the U.S. and Europe will be to restrain themselves and not press-gang Central Asia into their crusade against the Islamic Republic.
Washington should support local problem-solving efforts through initiatives such as the Organization of Turkic States, but there is a great chance Washington and Brussels will be unable to shake the confused belief that the only good ally is a subservient ally.
An independent ally with a strong economy is the best friend, and the Central Asian republics will respond to rational political calculation and good will instead of impulsiveness driven by a narrow fixation on Tehran, to the detriment of America’s wider interests in Eurasia.
James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
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When the Kazakh and Uzbek officials meet up, can they speak one of their two languages and understand each other? There is mutual intelligibility between Turkish and Azeri, but those Central Asian Turkic languages might be more distinct from one another.
They can use Russian.
iran’s defiance in the face of western oppression is most laudable. their steadfast refusal to bow to the west and accept the colonial apartheid state, being foisted upon the middle east (at the expense of the long suffering palestian people), has served as inspiration throughout the region.
now it seems that they will assume a natural leadership position and facilitate the the peaceful reconciliation of the sunni and shia countries that are purposefully set against each other, by the former hegemon and it’s rabid pitbull.
it is amazing how fast the world can change, when diplomacy is allowed to exist and rational adults confer, to find a mutually beneficial solution, rather than deranged psychopaths terrorizing the world into compliance with their twisted demands. what a refreshing change.
They’re in different subbranches of the Turkic languages; Kazakh is in the same subbranch as Kyrgyz, and Uzbek is in the same subbranch as Uyghur. I think that Uzbek is the only Turkic language that has lost vowel harmony.
As @Malla noted, Russian is likely to be the “lingua franca” of the ex-USSR -stans.
Peace breaking out in the Middle East? Nooooo!! It’s like anudda Shoah.
I hope Biden and the heroic Bibi Netanyahu will bomb these countries back to the stone age to punish them for their insolence.
This destroys everything the Jews and their American lackeys had planned for Iran. Iran’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia must be especially infuriating. If this friendship solidifies, the only country left out would be Israel. Maybe Russia will offer Syria help to expel the American invaders in Syria that are stealing Syrian oil. Since the US is the main country leading the war against Russia in Ukraine, it would make sense.
It is only natural. A faggot psycho kike-slave is pretty repulsive. That kind of homo detritus usually can’t live long, relatively speaking. The faggot psycho kike-slave is the west, if it wasn’t obvious.
As opposed to ‘man on the street’ view, this is more like the ‘man on the throne’ perspective. I guess for those incapable of finding the MSM view.
Article forgot to mention the 2022 coup attempt in Kazakhstan by the US and subdued by Russia; might be an important piece of contextual information.
“Let’s not talk about who killed who,…”
All the developments on the INSTC will likely be coordinated with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). I recently did some research on this for a business project within my master’s degree. There is a lot of money behind these projects and a lot of political will for them to succeed. The winds are shifting to the East. Slowly, but surely. We should expect more anti-Iranian vitriol from Israel and the neoconservatives. As this is a direct challenge to their interests. This corridor goes all the way to Russia and into Europe as well. The Indians will also benefit big time from this. Lastly, it promotes more East-West trade as it bypasses the bottleneck at the Suez Canal. I recommend reading the Valdai Club documents on the project.
They waste their time.
The peoples of the world make their plans to achieve a better future without killing and stealing from other nations, but then the Western democratic crusaders arrive to demand that they let them steal from them or they will be bombed and starved with democratic sanctions.
Thus, Christianity and democracy have become a curse on the world, keeping it living in a hopeless apocalypse.
Hope is a four letter word.
Interesting, a few silly statements in the last half of the article, but one point that interested me and was not explained in the linked article, if Iran ‘turned over’ the Afghan embassy, who was running it for the last two years?
As for the Taliban v. 2.0, Bamiyan is an endless stain from v. 1.0.
I disagree with your criticism. Suffice to say, Geopolitical Easy is over for the US Sovereign, its embarrassment before the world political class, and even equally ideologically rigid critics.
Iran is the successor to the Persian Empire. During the Cold War it was between a rock and a hard place. Rather than get into the historical weeds, suffice to say since 1978-79, Iran has been engaged in reclaiming its sovereignty.
Nothing’s free in this world, especially that.
The anti-Trump alignment, anyone who is anybody, foreign and domestic, went into crisis mode in the fall of 2019. Trump was sailing toward reelection on his nefarious Peace and Prosperity plan. He had laid the predicate for a genuine rapprochement with Iran. Remember, right before the kickoff of the Covid madness, were the attacks on the American embassy in the Iraqi Green Zone eventuating in the drone strike on Soleimani. It was anything but coincidental that Iran got an early dose of the Covid in case the Iranian leadership failed to get the message that “Trump Must Go!” would be achieved by any means necessary.
The China brokered KSA-Iran deal is merely China collecting from its US tributary.
We can hope. I’m amazed, and in truth, disappointed, that Putin hasn’t taken some kinetic retribution against the freedom-loving democracies who’ve been waging war on his country for so long.
The Western countries of which you speak are neither Christian nor democratic.
India should seriously look to the near west to grab ,influence ,and add the nascent and burgeoning opportunities.
It will be tough , it will face psychological hurdles from within and from the neighboring countries .
That’s our sad history .But it can be overcome .
The real hurdles will come from US-UK-France and from totally sold out crony dynastic feudal politicians of Pakistan and miseducated fanatic die-hard Hinduvtta fanatics .
Saudi’s capitulation to realities will kill the residual remotest die hard Islamic fanatics .
RSS need to envision a new leitmotif and ditch the polemic , punish the rhetoricians who grandstand and lie for campaign and rein in the runaway train wreck of communalism .
Iran Pakistan Afghanistan India Uzbekistan and Tajikistan can form a solid block of cooperation .
It can work .
Agent provocateurs from internal and external forces will try to stymie the processes .
Out of nowhere new ISIS this time F-16 flying instead of driving Toyota ,might show up forcing the trembling hand of Biden to deploy troops in Pakistan Afghanistan and Tajikistan .
India should be psychologically prepared to denounce and work with those whose eye on the ball is laser focused to destroy ISIS or its new Covid variants leaking out of US labs .
One day people again be able to travel from Assam to Armenia through Iran or Pakistan and sell their wares .
Peace in this region won’t work without India’s involvement. Islamic fanatics will even try to join Hinduvatta fanatics to reinforce each other dwindling fortunes and might succeed with the helps of UK and US .
Just another Israeli grift. Israel and KSA are allies, just watch. The Iran and Syria rivalry will dissipate because it’s all a show for us plebs. The brainlet normies will be happy. The Jews have chosen the Chinese to rule this century.
Interesting article, thanks, informative, but some comments, see below if you will.
That’s silly. The USA and its long nose is too close to everybody (they were 20 yr in Afgh ffs!), and its economic clout has been decreasing for a good 3 decades (in most business areas, especially those connected with development, trends are more important than current magnitudes).
Not gonna happen. The current Western political leadership will not see a business opportunity involving Iran and the region if it hit them in the face. And western business leaders are wimps and eunuchs quickly demoralised by threats from their political komissars.
Your problem is in the use of the term “ally”. Forget about that shit. Alliances are against others and they involve losing something to please your ally. Eventuate a paradigm shift (sorry, I heard that from a good looking charlatan lady recently). Think of partnership instead. Partnership involves winning together while alliances imply suffering hardship together.
It looks like you are one of those silly little neurotic Jews pretending to be a sad gentile because Jews control everything and are behind everything of importance. That’s how it looks.
This place TUR is a hangout for astute observers of current trends. You might be out of place here.
Mmh, don’t get so excited nsf. If Iran is open for business and remains independent (i.e. it is possible to predict its behaviour), that’s great and welcome, but that thing about religious fanaticism has to be kept under control.
Sounds like Islam is on the move again… are the Jews of Spain ready to welcome them as their forefathers did a long time ago?
Some like this guy dreams the same wet dry ejaculatory dream
– SETH CROPSEY
Seth Cropsey is founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a US naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the navy,
https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/us-needs-assertive-eurasia-strategy/
Encouraging Saudi to restart Yemen war, giving Israel free hand in Gaza and West Bank , Lebanon and Syria , freeing-
poaching India from Russian dependence , thwarting Saudi and Iranian ‘“ Hegemonic dreams”, roping again Turkey to Israeli agenda ,
He is lamenting the lost opportunities of attacking Iran openly and wonders of ground invasion ( as if Iraq war did not happen and as if the handwringing,
Blame- game over Iraq did not occur , and as if war engineering PNAC did not seek refuge in new
letter head criminal organization , as if Abu Ghraib were a moral blip in otherwise immaculate consensual sex between the perverts liberal and conservatives of Transatlantic Zionized hybrids , as if drug abuse ,suicide and financial wreck did not visit white America , as if last 20 years evaporated leaving hiatus for the same warmongers to fill in ) could prevent the fall from the precipice .
I hear tons of browns from South America are moving to Spain.
to me it’s the sunni’s that are the religious fanatics and all of the u.s. and israeli’s proxies are wahhabist sunni fundamentalists. the russians, along with the iranians and hezbollah have been fighting isil and al qaeda terrorists funded by the u.s. and israel for years, please notice how these groups never attack israel.
I wonder if these false flags in Syria by the US of A have anything to do with these positive developments? Yes.
Weird.
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True enough and they integrate and work fine. The problem is with the tons of North African Arabs.
They don’t integrate, make extensive use of free schools and healthcare, have a much higher birthrate and are given nationality. Altogether a time bomb introduced by Spanish Wokes.
What Jews in Spain? Their neighborhoods are now empty and are used as touristic attractions in some cities. It seems they are now about 0.1% of the population, maybe 0.2%. Muslims on the other hand, lots and lots. So your comment is remarkably ignorant.
America is occupying Syrian territory illegally and stealing its oil, siphoning it to its puppeteer and fellow mass murderer, Israel. Yet all these Emirati ragheads can come up with is see Iran as a greater threat. It must be the Abrahamic capitulation.
Sure the sunnis have their fanatics but Iran has a Supreme Leader which is their religious top honcho. Supreme Leader is equivalent to Fuhrer. And their Rev. Guard is a vast and powerful religious militia. But it seems they are becoming more tolerant, and that is really good news.
Agree completely, NSF, with this and with your previous statement.
Far from the fanatical anti-Iran propaganda the West gets doused in continuously (and which Western simpletons constantly fall for) Iran is a great moderating force in the Middle East. It is and will continue to balance out the nutty Sunis.
China probably went to both of them and said: how’s that Pax-Americana working out for you?
The they told the Saudis that the West is going electric in 10 years and the US is going to dump and regime-change their sorry asses but that China still has a whole continent to develop and if they want a part of that, they better get on board because they’re not going to include them in their great project if they don’t act civilized.
Good for them and good for all of us, … except for the Uncle Sham and his alliance of ‘good.’
Why would he do that? Western nations are still just funding, procuring and cheerleading, that’s not really waging war.
Religious fanaticism is the best thing about Iran.
Depends on what the west had planned in Donbas. If there was to be a population transfer or extermination he did very very well.
Part of the problem is trying to push Christianity and democracy together…. It doesn’t really work.
It is actually Waging Imperialism. The Roman conquest of Greece followed a similar pattern. Rome posed as a friend of the Greeks against the Macedonians and Selucids. Once the Macedonians were destroyed the Romans got to work on Corinth.
It’s quite impressive skulldugery in several respects.
Of note… Most of those people in North Africa are Berbers rather than “Arabs”. They speak Arabic – but are ethnically different.
Mestizos from South America are not good for Spain, they may speak the same language but they pollute the white racial stock of Spain, North Africans are bad for another reason (their horrible culture) although they don’t interbreed much with the native Spanish except through rape.
Spain will greet them with an army of friendly crossdressers.
They may speak Berber as their first language but they have a lot of negro mixed in with their genes.
“Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed whom …” Such a great movie.
You are blaming the ancient hatred and conflict between Shia and Sunni on the USA and Israel?
And everyone agrees?
A disagreement over succession after Mohammed’s death in 632 split Muslims into Islam’s two main sects, Sunni and Shia.
1400 years ago.
But Taliban 2.0 tweets very well though.
Chinese apparently do not agree with the Israeli world view. They are not keen to sell off the crown jewels to the west either.
Death to zionism, Death to Israel, Down with baby killer, Netanyahu
BOMB ISRAEL NOW
Israel and Netanyahu intervene in the US ‘election’ of 2016 to put the Jewish mafia servant, Trump into power. The US ‘president’ is selected by the Jewish mafia and its pimps. Shame on Americans to support an illiterate mafia servant, trump.
The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel.
While the American media and political system fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his armies of cyber warriors, trolls, and bots, what was completely missed in the Russiagate investigation of 2016 was the Israeli connection. No details of it were ever revealed in the heavily redacted Mueller Report. Nor was there any mention of an Israeli plot in the similarly redacted Senate Intelligence Committee Report on collusion charges in the 2016 election, or in any of the indictments or trials stemming from the Russia charges.
Nor did any mention of Israeli involvement ever leak into the press. Yet I can reveal here the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.
In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of Palestine.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-israel-collusion/
The fifth column and a traitor, Mark Dubowitz who promoted the war against Iraq and now against Iran, now is spreading lies against Iran, to bring war against Iran. This Jewish mafia terrorist should be arrest and put on trial as a TRAITOR and agent of a foreign country Israel.
The latest lie from this traitor:
Mark Dubowitz
@mdubowitz
13h
Iran’s militias kill an American in Syria and get a feeble U.S. response.
Mark Dubowitz
@mdubowitz
Until the Biden administration adopts the Israeli “Octopus” doctrine and hits the head not the tentacles, the regime in Iran will continue killing and maiming Americans.
The Shia/Sunni split is one thing, and the US and Zionazi efforts to exacerbate it, and cause untold human suffering today, is simply one more abominable crime by these two Satans-the Great and the Lesser Satans. It is laid bare in the Oded Yinon Plan, as a tactic that the Zionazis would use to attack all their Islamic neighbours.
Before she can join any of the neighboring countries, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asian countries, India first has to stop self-destructing. Under the murderer Narendra Modi, self-destruction is all that India is capable of. 20 years ago, India was almost on bar with China in terms of development and competition. But where is India today? and where is China? In the fake statistics of the world bank, India’s economy has been growing year after year, until the whole sham was exposed on April 1, 2018, when 28 million Indians applied for 90,000(ninety thousand) jobs posted by Indian Rail way, jobs that paid a mere $300 (three hundred) a month! If the Indian people get rid of that Zionist stooge, Mr. Modi and his criminal cronies, who knows perhaps India could recover.
Shia Sunni division isn’t religious but political.
Actually Iran embraced Shia in around 1600 or later to confront Sunni Turkey .
where in my comment, did i blame the ancient hatred on the u.s. and israel. i said they are purposefully set against each other by the u.s. and israel, which is most likely why others agree. you should read the comment more carefully, unless you are purposefully misreading it.