Turan Research Center

The ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran are being watched closely across the South Caucasus. Regional actors understand that the outcome will shape more than just the security architecture of the Middle East — it will directly affect a region that borders Iran and depends on it for both security and economic stability. Any shift in Tehran's international standing will redefine the strategic environment for Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan alike.

Two paths are open: a positive scenario, in which the talks succeed and peace is achieved, and a negative scenario, in which they collapse and conflict drags on. Each path implies sharply different consequences for Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

Current Realities: Each Country's Relationship with Iran

Armenia is one of Iran's closest and most reliable neighbors. Tehran hosts a prominent Armenian diaspora whose historical and cultural presence is constitutionally recognized by Article 64, including a two-seat quota in Iran's parliament. Beyond these cultural ties, the relationship rests on a shared strategic interest in balancing the Turkic bloc. For landlocked Armenia, Iran is also an indispensable economic and transit lifeline, providing access to its ports and domestic transport networks. Although Iran is not among Armenia’s largest direct trading partners, its strategic importance extends far beyond bilateral trade. Roughly a quarter of Armenia’s foreign trade transits Iranian territory, making Iran a critical logistical corridor for Armenian commerce. Moreover, Iran provides Armenia with essential access to major markets such as China and the UAE, both of which rank among Armenia’s leading trade partners. Iran also plays a vital role in Armenia’s energy security through the gas-for-electricity agreement in force since 2009, under which Armenia exports electricity to Iran in exchange for natural gas.

Defense ties matter too. Military cooperation between Yerevan and Tehran has deepened since the 2020 44-Day War exposed Armenia's vulnerabilities in air defense and drone warfare. In July 2024, Iran International reported a roughly $500 million arms dealbetween the two countries, covering drones, air-defense missile systems, intelligence cooperation, and training — though Armenia's Ministry of Defense publicly dismissed the report as "fictitious and fabricated," and Iran did not confirm it either. Two years later, at Armenia's Republic Day parade in Yerevan on May 28, 2026, Armenia publicly displayed Iran's AD-08 Majid short-range air-defense system. Iranian sources have claimed the Majid was used to damage a U.S. F-35 during the 2026 conflict with Iran.

Georgia is the only South Caucasus country without a direct land border with Iran. Different foreign policy orientations and security priorities have kept the two countries from ever pursuing a closer strategic partnership. Instead, their relationship is best described as a "cool friendship," resting on two understandings: Iran respects Georgia's territorial integrity, and Georgia stays out of anti-Iranian international campaigns.

Economic ties between the two countries remain limited. In 2024, Georgia ran a trade deficit of about $240 million with Iran: Georgia's imports from Iran consisted mainly of raw iron bars and other construction-related materials, while its exports to Iran were dominated by sawn wood. The total value of Georgia's exports to Iran in 2024 was just $36 million — far too small to place Iran among Georgia's top ten export destinations.

Unlike Armenia, Georgia has little prospect of building a deep economic relationship or strategic partnership with Iran. Over the past two years, the most notable moments in Georgian-Iranian relations have simply been senior Georgian officials attending funerals and inaugurations in Tehran. Tbilisi's gradual drift away from a strictly pro-Western orientation has made Iranian authorities somewhat optimistic, but history suggests there are real limits to how far Georgia will go — likely no further than a "cold but friendly"relationship with Tehran.

Azerbaijan is, in many ways, one of Iran's most complicated neighbors. Despite the religious, historical, and cultural ties between the two nations, the existence of an independent, prosperous Azerbaijan next door serves as an uncomfortable reminder to Iran's ethnic Azerbaijani population — estimated at up to a third of the country — that life outside Iranian rule is possible.

Conversely, Iran's state-sponsored Shiite ideology poses a serious challenge to Azerbaijan's national security. To offset this, Baku has built strategic partnerships with Turkey and, more controversially, with Iran's arch-rival, Israel. In the wake of the Azerbaijan-Israel partnership, Baku has repeatedly come under harsh criticism from senior Iranian officials. Consequently, when war broke out between Israel and Iran, there was a real risk of it spilling over into the South Caucasus.

Given these strained relations, economic ties between Tehran and Baku remain modest — though trade turnover between the two is still higher than between Iran and Georgia. That said, Azerbaijan's exports to Iran are almost two-fifths lower than Georgia's exports to Iran.

Scenarios and Stakes for Each Country

Armenia

Armenia's close relationship with Iran has long been a source of frustration for Washington. However, sustained lobbying by the Armenian diaspora helped convince U.S. policymakers that, for a country blockaded by Azerbaijan and Turkey, maintaining ties with Iran was a strategic necessity rather than a political choice. For Yerevan, a potential rapprochement between Tehran and Washington could fundamentally reshape its regional position by removing the principal obstacle to implementing the long-discussed strategic partnership agreement with Iran. Such a development would significantly expand bilateral cooperation across the economic, political, infrastructure, energy, and transit sectors.

A sanctions-free Iran would open a far larger market for Armenian exports — and it would do so precisely as Iran's own consumer demand contracts under sanctions and regional instability, including Armenian imported products. Beyond the market, the normalization of Iran's relations with the West could unlock substantial opportunities in the energy sector. The removal of sanctions on Iranian energy exports would not only strengthen Armenia's energy security but could also transform the country into a strategic transit corridor for Iranian gas and oil destined for Georgia and, potentially, European markets. In this context, recent statements by Iran's vice president regarding the unblocking of regional transport and energy infrastructure could become politically and economically feasible.

The transit benefits would be equally significant. Armenia would enjoy easier access to Iran's Persian Gulf ports, particularly Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, which Tehran granted Armenia access to in 2024 to facilitate trade with India and other Asian markets. Greater regional stability and the easing of sanctions would substantially increase the commercial value of these routes, potentially transforming Armenia into a key component of emerging North-South connectivity networks. Under such circumstances, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's ambition to increase bilateral trade with Iran from $1 billion to $3 billion would become achievable rather than populist rhetoric.

The security implications could be just as profound. An Iran no longer constrained by sanctions or the constant threat of military confrontation would possess greater political, economic, and military leverage in the South Caucasus. From Yerevan's perspective, this would strengthen Iran's ability to counterbalance Azerbaijan and Turkey, thereby shifting the regional balance of power in Armenia's favor. This convergence could ultimately produce a military alliance, as Yerevan and Tehran tried to do in 1999. Ironically, a more stable southern border would reduce Armenia's dependence on Russian security guarantees, providing Yerevan with greater strategic flexibility as it continues to pursue a more pro-Western foreign policy.

Consequently, if a durable peace or normalization process were to emerge between Tehran and Washington, Armenia would likely rank among its greatest geopolitical beneficiaries. The economic, transit, energy, and security dividends would collectively strengthen Armenia's regional position while expanding its strategic room for maneuver.

Armenia stands to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of a potential normalization of relations between the United States and Iran, but it is equally among the most vulnerable if the conflict is prolonged. A war that weakens or destabilizes Iran would have profound economic, humanitarian, and security consequences for Yerevan.

Economically, Armenia would face serious disruptions to its connectivity with key trading partners, particularly China and the United Arab Emirates, as a substantial share of its external trade transits through Iranian territory. During the recent hostilities, transport disruptions and border restrictions nearly doubled the average delivery time for goods arriving from China. A prolonged conflict would deepen Armenia's geographic isolation, leaving Georgia as its only reliable gateway to international markets. At the same time, instability in Iran could jeopardize Armenian energy security by disrupting the long-standing gas-for-electricity arrangement that has become an important component of the country's energy diversification.

The humanitarian consequences could also be significant. Armenia has long served as a preferred destination for Iranian citizensseeking travel, business opportunities, or temporary refuge. A large-scale deterioration of conditions in Iran could trigger refugee flows into Armenia, placing additional pressure on the country's public services and administrative capacity.

The security consequences could be graver still. The weakening of Iran would reduce one of the key geopolitical constraints on Azerbaijan and Turkey while simultaneously increasing Armenia's strategic vulnerability. Under such circumstances, Yerevan could once again find itself relying more heavily on Russia for security guarantees, undermining its recent efforts to diversify its foreign policy and deepen integration with the Euro-Atlantic community. In effect, the prolonged conflict would risk pulling Armenia back into the cycle of dependence from which it has been trying to escape.

Finally, continued instability in Iran would postpone Armenia's broader strategic ambition of transforming itself from a peripheral, landlocked state into a key transit hub linking the Persian Gulf, the South Caucasus, and Europe. Conversely, a durable détente between Tehran and Washington could fundamentally reshape Armenia's long-term development trajectory by unlocking new opportunities in trade, infrastructure, energy, and regional connectivity.

Georgia

Since 1995, Iran has repeatedly sought to position Georgia as a transit hub connecting Iran with Western markets and Russia. However, international sanctions, Tehran's prolonged isolation, and recurring regional conflicts have consistently prevented these ambitions from materializing. A normalization of US-Iran relations could fundamentally alter this dynamic. A revitalized Iranian economy would likely generate higher trade volumes, increasing cargo flows through Georgia's transport corridors and ports, particularly the Anaklia Deep Sea Port, Poti Port, and Batumi Port.

This prospect has become even more significant following the Georgian government's decision to finance the construction of the Anaklia Deep Sea Port and retain ownership of its core infrastructure while inviting foreign partners to develop and operate the cargo terminals. If Iran were able to fully reintegrate into international trade, Iranian transit cargo could become an important source of demand, strengthening the commercial viability of Anaklia and reinforcing Georgia's ambition to establish itself as a gateway between Asia and Europe.

That said, the scope of this cooperation would likely remain confined to maritime connectivity. As long as Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain under Russian occupation, Georgia cannot realistically serve as a land corridor linking Iran with Russia. Rail connections through Abkhazia remain politically impossible, while the Roki Tunnel — the principal route connecting Russia to South Ossetia — lies outside Tbilisi's control.

In the energy sector, the lifting of sanctions on Iran would provide Georgia with meaningful opportunities to diversify its energy partnerships. Beyond increasing imports of Iranian hydrocarbons, it could stimulate investment in strategic infrastructure, including oil and gas terminals, storage facilities, and potentially refining capacity. Over the longer term, improved political conditions could also revive discussions about pipeline projects crossing Georgian territory to deliver Iranian energy resources to European markets, which have been actively seeking alternative suppliers since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Georgia's immediate security picture would change little. The open question is whether a wealthier, more confident Iran would seek to build influence among Georgia's Shiite minority - something already watched closely by both Georgian and international security officials.

In a negative scenario, where the conflict continues for an extended and uncertain period, Georgia's economy would face significant challenges. Beyond the immediate impact of rising global oil and gas prices, two of the country's most important economic sectors — tourism and construction — would be particularly affected.

Over the past several years, Georgia has emerged as an increasingly attractive destination for visitors from the Middle East, particularly from Israel and the Gulf countries. According to Gal & Taggart, the tourism sector has been among the hardest hit since the outbreak of the conflict, with revenues projected to decline by 32% compared to 2025.

The construction and real estate sectors would also come under pressure. Iranian building materials have become an important component of Georgia's construction supply chain, and any prolonged disruption to imports from Iran would increase construction costs, ultimately driving up real estate prices and slowing new development projects.

At the same time, a prolonged conflict could produce one important geopolitical benefit for Georgia. Continued instability in the Middle East would further reinforce the strategic importance of the Middle Corridor as an alternative trade route connecting Asia with Europe, increasing Georgia's value as a transit state and strengthening its geopolitical significance.

Nevertheless, the security and humanitarian risks should not be overlooked. Although Georgia does not share a border with Iran, its geographic proximity means it would not be insulated from the consequences of a prolonged conflict. In the event of a major deterioration of the security situation inside Iran, Georgia could face increased migratory pressure, as the distance between the two countries is relatively short and Georgia remains an accessible destination for those seeking safety or onward transit.

Azerbaijan

For Baku, Iran’s return from international isolation would be the least favorable of the three possible scenarios. A wealthier and economically revitalized Iran, no longer constrained by American sanctions, would present a far greater strategic challenge to Azerbaijan, regardless of whether Tehran remains an Islamic Republic or gradually evolves into a more secular, nationalist state. In either case, the "Azerbaijan question" would remain central, as it resonates with both the Islamic and nationalist currents of Iranian politics.

A stronger Iran would likely adopt a more assertive policy toward Baku, not only to limit Azerbaijan’s growing regional influence but also to demonstrate to its own ethnic Azerbaijanis — again, up to a third of the population — that living within Iran remains preferable to the alternative across the border. While a more nationalist Iran could, in theory, place greater emphasis on cultivating ties with the Talysh minority in southern Azerbaijan rather than relying primarily on Shiite solidarity, such a shift is unlikely. The Shiite religious framework would remain Tehran’s broader and more effective instrument for projecting influence in Azerbaijan.

This scenario would also deepen Azerbaijan’s strategic reliance on Turkey. As pressure from Iran increases, closer security and political coordination with Ankara would become increasingly necessary. However, this presents a dilemma for President Aliyev's government, which has carefully sought to balance its "one nation, two states" partnership with Turkey while limiting Ankara’s influence over Azerbaijan’s domestic political affairs. Excessive dependence on Turkey would therefore run counter to Baku’s long-standing preference for maintaining strategic autonomy.

A prolonged Iran–U.S. conflict would produce a more ambiguous outcome for Azerbaijan than just increasing oil incomes. On the one hand, a militarily and economically weakened Iran would temporarily reduce pressure on Baku. It would also reinforce the Azerbaijan-backed Middle Corridor project. On the other, the collapse or fragmentation of the Iranian state would create far greater security risks than the current situation. From Azerbaijan’s perspective, the most favorable outcome is arguably the continuation of the status quo: an Iran that remains internationally isolated and constrained by sanctions but retains firm control over its territory.

The breakdown of central authority in Tehran could transform the Iranian-Azerbaijani border into a source of instability, facilitating irregular migration, terrorism, drug trafficking, and transnational organized crime. Moreover, although Azerbaijan has so far avoided direct involvement in the Iran–Israel confrontation despite its close security partnership with Israel, this position cannot be taken for granted. Drone strikes attributed to Iran near the Nakhchivan exclave demonstrated that Azerbaijan could still become exposed to the conflict should regional hostilities escalate further. And the next target could be a strategic asset on the mainland, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Conclusion

The deeper point is that all three South Caucasus states have become hostages to a negotiation in which none of them holds a seat. Their exposure to Tehran’s fate — Armenia’s connectivity and security, Georgia’s transit ambitions, Azerbaijan’s border and its balancing act between Turkey and Israel — is a function of decisions taken in Washington and Tehran, not in Yerevan, Tbilisi, or Baku. That is precisely why each has spent the past two years widening its options: Armenia hedging between Moscow, the West, and Tehran; Georgia positioning Anaklia and the Middle Corridor as insurance; Azerbaijan deepening ties with Ankara while guarding its autonomy against it. Whichever way the US-Iran track breaks, the states that weather it best will be those that refused to bet on a single outcome — and the coming year will test how far that hedging can substitute for the leverage none of them holds.

 Bako Kheladze is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Irregular Warfare Initiative, specializing in international relations and security studies, with a particular focus on Iran, the South Caucasus, and Eurasian geopolitics. He holds an M.A. in International Security Studies from the University of Leicester. Previously, he served as a Press Officer at the Embassy of Georgia to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is fluent in Georgian, English, Persian, and Russian.

Illustration by Dinmukhamed Kairulla.

Two powers locked in global rivalry rarely end up invested in the same piece of infrastructure. On the Middle Corridor, the United States and China now are. The route across Kazakhstan, the Caspian, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey is, for Beijing, the last dependable land path to Europe after sanctions foreclosed the northern route through Russia and escalation risk shadowed the southern branches through Iran. For Washington, it is something else — an instrument for shaping how the competition with China is conducted. Their interests converge, and the convergence is narrow, situational and reversible: a window, not a settlement.

What makes the window worth Washington's attention is the asymmetry inside it. The American economy does not rely on this corridor; China's increasingly does. That imbalance turns a trade route into leverage and points U.S. strategy away from its reflex — excluding Beijing — toward a more durable question: who sets the rules the corridor runs on. The Middle Corridor's value to the United States lies less in controlling a route than in managing a rivalry, and the contest worth winning runs through standards, not segments.

China's Geo-economic Imperative: From Diversification to Dependence

Beijing did not choose the corridor's new prominence; the closing of its alternatives produced it. The Belt and Road Initiative was built on redundancy — multiple land routes hedging one another — and the crises around Ukraine and Iran have compressed that redundancy into a single priority. In purely economic terms, the Middle Corridor is now the only viable land route to Europe China has left.

Overland connectivity also answers a deeper anxiety. A confrontation with the United States in the Indo-Pacific could throttle the maritime chokepoints, Malacca foremost, on which China's seaborne trade depends; a working land bridge across Eurasia is insurance against a blockade it cannot otherwise escape. This is the strategic logic beneath the commercial one, and it is why the corridor outranks its tonnage.

The result is a contradiction Beijing has to hold open. Politically, it stays bound to Russia and Iran to advance multipolarity and contest U.S. primacy. Geo-economically, its most secure path to Europe now runs through terrain — Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey — where U.S. and EU influence is pronounced. China sustains Moscow and Tehran inside BRICS and the SCO while deepening a stake in a corridor those partners do not control.

One consequence is easy to miss. The stability and policy predictability of the Central Asian and South Caucasian states have acquired direct economic value for Beijing; as the northern and southern routes grow less dependable, the institutional resilience of the Middle Corridor becomes proportionally more valuable to China — a valuation the regional states are aware they now command.

U.S. Strategic Interests: Eurasian Decentralization and Managed Competition

For Washington, the corridor's value is geopolitical before it is commercial. Its development widens the foreign-policy autonomy of the Central Asian and South Caucasian states; integrating them into global supply chains through the corridor enlarges their room to maneuver — room these states already use deliberately, not reluctantly.

Since the disruption of Eurasian trade by the war in Ukraine and the maritime chokepoints of the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, the United States has treated alternative routes as a piece of its economic-security strategy, on the logic that diversified supply chains are less hostage to localized conflict and blockade. The Trump administration's approach sharpens this further, foregrounding economic and fiscal effectiveness in U.S. policy toward Central Asia.

Washington's incentive, then, is to back the corridor while keeping it multilateral — its core interest being to prevent a closed system under exclusive Chinese control. This is where the asymmetry does its work. Because China's exposure to the corridor exceeds Washington's, every increment of the route's development raises the cost of large-scale confrontation for Beijing and presses it toward predictable conduct in Central Eurasia — without the United States having to spend equivalently to hold the same leverage. The Middle Corridor is not merely transport infrastructure for Washington but a potential mechanism for managing competition with China on terms of transparency and inclusivity.

The Corridor as a Competition-Management Mechanism: From Containment to Coordination

The route's growing weight in global trade opens a space where strategic rivalry and a limited overlap of interests can coexist. Washington can treat the corridor as a working instrument for managing competition with China across Eurasia.

The older logic of containment — restricting China's technological reach and presence — does not vanish here. It is joined by a second objective: managed competition. The aim is a Eurasian connectivity architecture that keeps transport routes open, strengthens the sovereignty of regional states, and stops any single power, China above all, from securing unilateral control.

The analogy is the managed rivalry of the late Cold War, where both sides preserved predictability and open channels to prevent escalation. Applied to the corridor, the risk being managed is the fragmentation of the global economy into sealed blocs. Current U.S. policy in Central Asia is drifting in this direction, privileging economic cooperation and fiscal efficiency. The corridor could then anchor a new geo-economic order for Central Eurasia, one in which breaking the shared transport system becomes too costly for any stakeholder — infrastructure as a brake on destructive confrontation.

The regional actors — the Central Asian states, the South Caucasus and Turkey — are not the backdrop to this arrangement but its load-bearing players. Their drive to maximize transit volumes and sustain multi-vector foreign policies is what keeps the system open. The EU has a direct stake too, seeking to reinforce regional independence while preserving its trade ties with China; it sits at the meeting point of geopolitical interests shared with the U.S. and geo-economic interests shared with Beijing.

The mechanism has limits worth naming. The corridor can shape behavior in secondary and tertiary arenas — trade, logistics, regional policy in Central Eurasia. It will not be decisive in an existential confrontation, such as one over Taiwan, where security and military control would override economic logic.

The Temporal Factor: Why the Window Is Transitory

The present alignment among the U.S., China, the EU and the regional states does not reflect a structural shift in global politics. It is the product of a particular cluster of crises, which makes it reversible. Several developments could close the window:

·       Revival of the other land routes. A stabilization of Russia–West relations could quickly restore the northern route's appeal for China, given its established infrastructure and the absence of Caspian transit complications. A de-escalation around Iran would do the same for southern branches, which Beijing values for redundancy.

·       Escalation of U.S.–China confrontation. A sharp move to direct confrontation would dissolve the room for coordination. If the corridor comes to be seen purely as leverage, the pragmatic basis for cooperation erodes.

·       Competition from new systems. Arctic routes or other maritime schemes could redistribute cargo flows rapidly.

The political task of the moment is whether stakeholders can convert a temporary convergence into a durable system. The opportunity can easily be squandered — not least because Central Eurasia still sits in the "limited interests and limited means" category of American strategic thinking. With simultaneous pressures in the Middle East, Europe and the Indo-Pacific, Washington's attention and resources may stay fixed on theaters judged more central to U.S. security and economy. If a path-dependence effect can be locked in through coordination mechanisms and long-term investment while the current configuration holds, the corridor keeps its relevance after the political weather changes. Without that, it remains a stopgap that loses viability at the first realignment.

Toward a Logic of Managed Connectivity

The situation hands Washington a rare chance to do three things at once: integrate Central Eurasian states into the global market, reinforce the sovereignty of the Central Asian and South Caucasian states, and shape — fiscally efficiently — an infrastructural architecture compatible with U.S. interests even amid competition with China.

Seizing it requires adjusting the traditional U.S. approach to Eurasian infrastructure. Turning the corridor into an instrument of direct containment would undermine the very stability that makes it useful. For most regional states the priority is not enlistment in an anti-Chinese or anti-Russian coalition but the inclusive expansion of transit, investment and their own multi-vector policies. The more promising strategy is therefore not to exclude China but to shape the rules and institutions that keep the route open, multilateral and resistant to monopolization. If Beijing reads the corridor as a relatively neutral and predictable system, its interest in developing it persists; if it reads the corridor as a U.S. containment tool, Chinese support contracts and a direct struggle for control over the route and its transit states follows.

Influencing the architecture is more realistic and more cost-effective than excluding a player. Here Washington's leverage is real: supply-chain resilience, procurement transparency, anti-corruption mechanisms, digital compatibility and data standards, cybersecurity and logistics norms. In the modern economy, competition has moved from a contest over physical routes to a contest over the rules and standards that govern them — and it is in standards and institutions that American influence proves most durable and most affordable.

Preserving the route's multilateral character serves the same end. The less it looks like one power's project, the better its odds of survival. Washington can support a distributed management model spanning the regional states, the EU, the international financial institutions and outside partners, including China. The most promising direction is not financing discrete projects but underwriting the corridor's overall logistical and digital architecture. Its central weakness is that it functions today not as one artery but as a chain of national segments — Chinese, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Turkish, European — each adding transaction costs, administrative friction and disruption risk. Knitting those segments together is what converts the corridor from a set of disjointed links into a resilient Eurasian system.

Backing regional leadership in governance — Central Asian and South Caucasian states alongside Turkey — advances Washington's Eurasian priority of reinforcing their sovereignty and, in the same move, keeps the architecture open, because openness is exactly what their multi-vector policies require. Institutional integration of the Middle Corridor with TRIPP (the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the U.S.-brokered Armenia–Azerbaijan transit link) is a pivotal piece, and it raises geopolitical problems the regional states cannot resolve alone. The international financial institutions — the World Bank, the EBRD, the IFC — offer a vehicle for port modernization, digitalization and supply-chain resilience that does not brand the corridor as an American project.

The wider prize is a shift from the reactive logic of containment to a model of managed competition through connectivity — building conditions under which rival powers find it in their mutual interest to keep a shared system intact.

A Stable Eurasian Architecture, or a Stopgap

The current convergence is not strategic alignment; it is an opening for pragmatic coordination on infrastructure and logistics, and openings expire. What the participants do with it will decide which of two Eurasias takes shape: one of sealed, economically isolated blocs, or one of managed interconnection able to absorb shocks and dampen conflict. The decisive contest will not be over the corridor's physical segments but over whose rules govern them — and that is the contest Washington is currently best positioned to win and most likely to neglect. The standards-setting moment is the window, and it is narrow. If the architecture is not locked in while the alignment holds, the corridor reverts to a stopgap that the next realignment renders obsolete. The cost of waiting is not a worse deal later; it is no seat at the table when the rules are written.

Dr. Andrei Kazantsev-Vaisman is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center specializing in international relations and security in Eurasia. He is also a fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University and has held academic appointments at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the Eurasian National University in Astana, and Narxoz University in Almaty. During the war on terror in Afghanistan, he directed the Center for Central Asian and Afghan Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and served on the Russian–American Working Group on Counterterrorism in Afghanistan under the East–West Institute. He is the author of over 100 publications, including 25 peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus, and his expert analysis has been cited by major international media including The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, The Washington Post, BBC, and Deutsche Welle.

Central Asian governments are willing to summon Russia's ambassadors. Over the past two years, Bishkek has done so over a police raid on a Moscow bathhouse that left Kyrgyz migrants beaten; Tashkent over the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin's public musing about "annexing" Uzbek territory; Dushanbe over the murder of a Tajik schoolboy outside Moscow. These are not the gestures of states that cannot say no to the Kremlin. They are calibrated acts of protest, deployed when a grievance is visible enough at home that silence would cost more than the friction with Moscow.

One grievance never makes the list. Russia is drawing thousands of Central Asian citizens into its war against Ukraine, and on this, the foreign ministries of Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent have said nothing — not once, at least publicly. The contrast is the analytical puzzle worth explaining. These governments will confront Moscow over the mistreatment of their citizens, but not over their recruitment, and the reason is not weakness. It is that recruitment touches the one Russian interest these states judge too costly to contest: the Kremlin's need for manpower.

Why foreign recruitment matters to Moscow

The value of foreign recruits to Russia is best understood against the politics of its own mobilization. When Putin announced a "partial" mobilization in September 2022 — later claiming 318,000 men drafted against a stated target of 300,000 — the move triggered the outcome the Kremlin most feared: protests in dozens of cities and an exodus of working-age men, with credible estimates of those who left Russia that year ranging from the high hundreds of thousandsinto the low millions. The lesson Moscow drew was that announced conscription is politically radioactive. It pivoted to paid volunteers, offering signing bonuses and monthly allowances well above prevailing wages, and, increasingly, to foreigners.

Foreigners solve a specific problem. Battlefield attrition is severe — NATO estimates Russian losses at between 1.3 and 1.45 million total casualties, including roughly 500,000 dead — and those casualties are themselves a source of domestic resentment. Recruiting abroad lets the Kremlin generate frontline manpower while keeping the human cost outside Russian households. A joint study by the International Federation for Human Rights, Truth Hounds, and the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, published in April 2026, found that Russia has recruited at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries since the full-scale invasion — a force comparable in size to the standing army of the Czech Republic, and one the report concludes is increasingly sustained through deception and coercion rather than ideology. Central Asians are the largest national contingent.

Moscow has also signaled how much it values this pipeline. In March 2026, Russia adopted legislation shielding foreign nationals who served under contract from extradition and administrative deportation, voiding such measures retroactively. The message to a recruit weighing the risk of prosecution back home is plain: serve, and Russia will not hand you over. For the sending states, that is the tell. Recruitment is not a peripheral irritant in the relationship; it is wired into Russia's capacity to keep fighting, which is why pressing on it carries a different order of risk than protesting a bathhouse raid.

How Central Asians end up in the war

The exact number of regional citizens fighting for Russia is unknown — Moscow conceals it, and distinguishing current nationals from naturalized former migrants is difficult. In May 2025 the head of Russia's Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, spoke of 20,000 Central Asian natives with acquired Russian citizenship sent to the front. The most-cited running tally comes from Ukraine's I Want to Live project, which operates within Kyiv's Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and draws on Ukrainian military intelligence — a source with an evident interest in the issue, and one whose figures are best read as identifications rather than settled counts. As of May 2026, it had named 12,919 Central Asian citizens under contract with the Russian defense ministry: Uzbekistan accounts for the most at roughly 4,955, followed by Tajikistan (3,489), Kazakhstan (2,420), Kyrgyzstan (1,474), and Turkmenistan (581).

The distribution tracks labor migration. Russia recruits overwhelmingly from foreigners already on its territory, and Uzbek and Tajik migrants form the largest such communities — by official accounts roughly 1.3 million Uzbeks and around a million Tajiks. The methods range from inducement to outright coercion. Recruiters advertise large signing payments and fast-tracked citizenship; the Uzbek migrant Gulomjon Adizov told the project Shaman TV he enlisted expecting an accelerated passport. Others are pressed: detainees nearing release are moved and offered contracts, migrants caught in fabricated drug cases are given a choice between prison and a contract, and labor disputes are resolved with the same ultimatum. The pattern is consistent — Russia converts legal and economic vulnerability into frontline manpower.

That dynamic also explains why captured Central Asians linger in Ukrainian camps. Kyiv treats all Russian-army personnel as combatants regardless of nationality, and under the Geneva Conventions returns prisoners to the power on which they depend — Russia. But Moscow prioritizes its own citizens in exchanges and, by the I Want to Live project's account, has never specifically sought the return of a Central Asian national; the handful exchanged held Russian passports as well. The men fall into a gap no state with leverage is working to close — including their own governments, which is the same forbearance visible at the diplomatic level.

What the states do at home

The claim that these governments simply submit to Russia does not survive contact with their own courtrooms, and the variation between them is itself informative. All five criminalize mercenary activity and participation in foreign conflicts; enforcement diverges sharply.

Kazakhstan is the most active. Its code offers two charges — mercenaryism, carrying seven to ten years (and up to life where deaths result), and the easier-to-prove participation in foreign armed conflicts, at five to nine. Investigators lean on the latter, since mercenaryism requires proving financial motive; of twenty rulings between 2023 and 2025, nineteen used the participation charge. In 2025, Kazakh authorities opened 709 cases for participation and 28 for mercenaryism, according to Mediazona and the Farewell to Arms project. Sentences, though, often fell below the statutory minimum on guilty pleas — leniency that, as the human-rights lawyer Artur Alkhastov notes, does little to deter.

The others show lighter or near-absent enforcement. Kyrgyzstan has handed down at least sixteen mercenaryism sentences and detained four people for recruitment in April 2025 — but released two of them to house arrest after the Russian ambassador met the head of its security service, and has revisited convictions under Russian pressure. Uzbekistan opened 338 cases since 2022 yet imprisoned defendants in only five of fifteen reviewed verdicts, favoring restrictions on freedom. Tajikistan's prosecutor general confirmed in February 2026 that not a single Tajik had been held to account. In Turkmenistan, a returning fighter reportedly avoided punishment through a bribe.

The spread maps onto exposure and capacity, not onto a single posture toward Moscow. But every government converges on the same line: prosecute at home, where the audience is domestic, and stay silent abroad, where the audience is the Kremlin.

Ukraine's approach as a probe

Kyiv has tested where that line sits, with a good-cop, bad-cop division of labor. Its diplomats keep the public conversation positive — Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha used a May 2026 interview to discuss Kazakh participation in Ukraine's reconstruction while saying nothing about Kazakh citizens at the front, and Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Mishchenko, pressed in Tashkent in April 2026, offered only that Ukraine would handle cases individually with Uzbek authorities. The pressure comes instead from I Want to Live, which publishes lists of identified and killed mercenaries — pointedly timing one release to the Central Asian leaders who attended Moscow's Victory Day parade — and sets out demands the diplomats avoid voicing: direct pressure on Russia, prosecution of recruiters and fighters, and public warnings to migrants. The split lets Kyiv apply pressure without spending its own diplomatic capital, and the muted official response from the region marks the limit it has reached: these states will quietly verify lists and prosecute at home, but will not be drawn into a public reckoning with Moscow.

Why the silence holds

To attribute that silence to dependence alone would be too simple, given how readily the same governments protest other Russian conduct. The forbearance is better read as a cost calculation that comes out differently for recruitment than for anything else.

Recruitment is the issue Moscow has signaled it cares about most, having legislated to keep foreign fighters beyond the reach of their home courts; contesting it invites disproportionate retaliation — intensified recruitment, trade pressure, or the propaganda machine turned on regional leaders. It also runs through the migrants themselves, whose remittances and absence from domestic labor markets these economies depend on; a Russian move to expel them would import unemployment and unrest. And some governments are themselves profiting from the war economy: Kyrgyzstan posted roughly 10 percent GDP growth in the first nine months of 2025 on a re-export boom, the same boom that in April 2026 made it the first country ever targeted by the EU's anti-circumvention tool. Set against all that, the recruitment of several thousand citizens — many of whom, officials privately note, went for the money — is a cost these states have decided to absorb rather than fight.

The cost deferred

That decision is a present choice with a future price, which is where its real significance lies. The men being recruited now will, in numbers, eventually come home with combat experience and a habit of settling matters by force. Russia's own experience is the warning: the SOC ACE program documents a nearly seventeenfold rise in murder and attempted-murder convictions involving military personnel inside Russia between 2021 and 2025. In a region where interstate violence still flares — the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border clashes of 2022 are only the most recent example, despite a 2025 demarcation deal — a population of battle-hardened returnees is a destabilizing input that each government will eventually have to manage. The same states now choosing not to confront Moscow over recruitment are, by that choice, deferring the security problem they will face when the recruits return.

Grigorii is a Ukrainian journalist originally from Kyrgyzstan. He has more than 15 years of experience working with Ukrainian and international media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. His primary areas of focus are the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, war crimes investigations, and Ukrainian relations with Central Asia.

Illustration by Dinmukhamed Kairulla.

The recent Hudson Institute study on the growing Iranian influence in Georgia has drawn significant attention to Georgian-Iranian relations. Following this investigative study, global media, including Persian-speaking groups, have actively published critical articles about Iranian penetration in Georgia. The Washington Post published an opinion piece titled "A former U.S. ally is slipping into Iran's orbit." Around the same time, a U.S. State Department delegation visited Tbilisi in late May for senior-level talks, raising Tbilisi's expectations of a genuine reset in U.S.-Georgia relations. This convergence of events has sparked debate about how a possible realignment between Tbilisi and Washington might reshape the trajectory of Georgian-Iranian relations. Yet to understand the limits of any such shift, one must look to history.

Why Georgia's Threat Environment Drives Everything

Georgia was once among the richest Soviet republics, yet it emerged from the Soviet collapse as one of the poorest and most security-vulnerable post-Soviet states, burdened by a continuous military threat from Russia and two breakaway regions. Beyond these threats, the country occupies a geopolitical periphery characterized by a fragile security environment and a weak democratic tradition. Faced with these compounding challenges, Eduard Shevardnadze chose to anchor Georgia's political future to Euro-Atlantic institutions and forge partnerships with the developed West.

The 2008 War deepened Georgia's vulnerability significantly. Russia formally recognized the independence of Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia, and then, under the banner of "borderization," continued occupying Georgian territory, advancing to within reach of the country's central highway. Since recognizing these separatist regimes, Russia has persistently sought broader international recognition for them, a campaign that has posed a serious and ongoing challenge for Georgian diplomacy, given the considerable disparity between Georgian and Russian diplomatic resources.

Despite Georgia's recent and dramatic foreign policy shift from a pro-Western to a multi-vector orientation, the country's existential threats have remained unchanged. The Russian occupation continues, and the Kremlin has not withdrawn its recognition of the breakaway regions. While Georgia's diversified foreign policy posture has somewhat softened rhetoric from Moscow, the absence of strong strategic partners such as the United States and the EU leaves Georgia even more exposed to Russian pressure and potential aggression.

Ultimately, Georgian foreign policy is heavily shaped by these enduring factors, and no Georgian government, regardless of its stated foreign policy orientation, can simply disregard them. This holds true whether the relationship in question is with the United States or with Iran.

Tehran's Early Bid for the Corridor

Despite Iran's historical claims on the Caucasus region, Tehran was among the first to engage with newly independent Georgia following the Soviet collapse. After Georgia declared independence under Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Iran sent one of the earliest governmental delegations and promptly recognized Georgian sovereignty. Seeking to break out of its international isolation, Tehran identified the Caucasus, and Georgia's transit potential in particular, as a strategic corridor linking Russia and the former socialist countries. In April 1995, President Rafsanjani — one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic of Iran — visited Georgia and personally asked head of state Eduard Shevardnadze to show him the Poti Port, the maritime gateway of Georgia and the South Caucasus. Following that visit, the Georgian and Iranian governments began active collaboration on the memorandum of understanding in the economic and industrial sectors, which opened much of Georgia's Soviet-era industrial base to Iranian participation. Beyond transit and industrial interests, Iran was keenly interested in Georgia's Soviet-era scientific establishment, particularly in the field of nuclear physics. According to various sources, several Georgian physicists from the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology (SIPT) worked on the Iranian nuclear program in the late 1990s. This alignment alarmed Washington, which pressured Shevardnadze's government to sever all cooperation with Iran, hand over the names of the Georgian physicists involved, and in exchange promised American assistance in rebuilding the country. Ironically, the Iranian factor became one of the catalysts that helped drive the development of Georgian-U.S. relations.

Out of this turbulent early period emerged what became known as "cold friendly" relations between Georgia and Iran: limited engagement built on mutual recognition of core interests, including respect for Georgia's territorial integrity and a Georgian commitment to refraining from joining anti-Iranian coalitions.

Three Decades of Pressure and Recalibration

As Georgia deepened its alignment with the Euro-Atlantic space, its distance from Iran grew accordingly, and the Rose Revolution intensified that alignment and drew open dissatisfaction from Tehran. Iranian leaders came to treat Georgia's revolution as a cautionary model for the kind of Western-backed political change they feared at home — a framing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made explicit during Iran's 2009 post-election unrest, when he dismissed the protest movement by insisting its backers were wrong to "think this is Georgia," where a color revolution could be engineered. In addition, Tehran viewed Georgia's growing alignment with NATO and Israel with suspicion, believing it could serve as a platform for collecting intelligence on Iran or even facilitating strikes against it — a fear that appeared plausible to Tehran in the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. This suspicion deepened around Georgian-Israeli defense cooperation, which intensified during the 2006–2008 tenure of Davit Kezerashvili — a Georgian Jew with Israeli citizenship — as defense minister. In Tehran's telling, Israel gained access to two former Soviet airbases in southern Georgia under his watch and used them to surveil Iran. Yet wariness did not preclude cooperation. In January 2006, the Ahmadinejad government supplied emergency gas to Georgia after pipeline explosions that Tbilisi attributed to Russian sabotage severed supplies in the middle of winter and plunged the country into an energy crisis.

Despite the early hostility in Iranian rhetoric, the "cold friendly" dynamic largely held throughout the Saakashvili era. Notably, the fact that Iran maintained strategic ties with Georgia's arch-rival Russia, while Georgia cultivated strategic ties with Iran's arch-rivals the United States and Israel, did not fundamentally destabilize bilateral relations.

After the 2008 War, when Russia sought international recognition for Georgia's breakaway regions, Iran, itself an ethnically diverse country sensitive to separatist precedents, declined to grant that recognition, adhering instead to the principle of Georgia's territorial integrity. However, the war's grave consequences left Georgia diplomatically weakened and unable to resist American pressure. In 2008, Georgian authorities extradited the Iranian national Amir Hossein Ardebili — arrested in Tbilisi in 2007 — to the United States; the case's public disclosure in 2009 triggered serious tension with Tehran and, reportedly, the evacuation of Georgian embassy staff from Iran. Relations did not normalize until 2011, when Georgia introduced a visa-free regime with Iran, a significant gain for the internationally isolated country.

The liberalization of Georgia's visa regime for Iranian nationals opened the country not only to ordinary Iranian citizens but also to individuals affiliated with the Iranian state and its sanctions-evasion networks, who saw Georgia as a convenient gateway for circumventing Western sanctions. This dynamic became evident as early as 2011, when Iranian businessmen — including Pourya Nayebi, Houshang Hosseinpour, and Houshang Farsoudeh, all three later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2014 under Executive Order 13608 — established an extensive commercial network in Georgia used to help Tehran evade sanctions. In 2012, Georgian security services defused a bomb planted under an Israeli embassy vehicle in Tbilisi, an attack attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), underscoring the security dimension of Iran's growing presence. In November 2022, Georgia's State Security Service announced it had foiled an IRGC-linked plot by an Iranian-Pakistani cell to assassinate Itzik Moshe, head of the Israel–Georgia Chamber of Commerce — not, the Jerusalem Post reported, Tehran's first attempt on his life.

By 2013, with the Georgian Dream party newly in power, the scale of Iranian activity had attracted serious attention from Washington. The Treasury Department grew increasingly alarmed at signs that operations on Georgian territory bore the hallmarks of money laundering and sanctions circumvention. Through a joint U.S.–Georgian effort, several Iranian-linked companies — including JSC InvestBank and the airline Fly Georgia — folded, and Tbilisi reinstated visa requirements for Iranian citizens, a measure that remained in place for roughly two years.

Iran's strategy in Georgia has not been confined to finance and logistics. Tehran has also pursued a sustained soft-power campaign aimed at Georgia's ethnic Azerbaijani Shia minority, viewing the community as a natural ideological foothold. Through religious and cultural outreach, Iran has sought to promote its brand of state-sponsored Shia theology and political ideology among Georgian Azerbaijanis, extending its influence beyond commerce and into the realm of identity and belief.

When Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and launched his "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, Georgia informally aligned with the sanctions regime. Georgian private banks barred Iranian citizens from opening international accounts, residency permits became increasingly difficult to obtain, and border rejections rose sharply. In response, the Iranian parliament issued sharp criticism of Georgia and called on Georgian authorities to reconsider their stance. The Covid-19 pandemic then brought Georgian-Iranian relations to their lowest point in decades, as border closures effectively severed all remaining ties.

Following the prolonged border closures, flights between the two countries resumed in 2021, and economic ties began a slow, modest recovery. It was in this context that Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze made two visits to Iran in 2024 — first for President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral in May, then for President Masoud Pezeshkian's inauguration in July — drawing alarm from Georgia's former partners in Brussels and Washington. At first glance, a head of government attending a state funeral in a nearby country is unremarkable. But the timing was telling: Kobakhidze's appearances in Tehran came precisely as Tbilisi's relations with the United States and the European Union were deteriorating sharply.

It should also be noted that, in a further complication, Georgia simultaneously deepened its ties with Israel during this period, a development that generated deeply contradictory perceptions of Georgia's evolving foreign policy trajectory, including in Tehran itself. Tehran, as always, closely monitors every development in Georgia-Israel relations, especially after the 12-Day War of June 2025. Shortly after that war, in August 2025, Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, traveled to Tbilisi for meetings with Georgian Interior Minister Gela Geladze and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, framed officially as an effort to deepen law-enforcement and counter-terrorism cooperation. Geladze reciprocated with a visit to Israel two months later, during which the two interior and security ministries signed a memorandum of understanding formalizing cooperation in law enforcement and security. Iran's state-aligned outlet Tabnak interpreted this trajectory — coupled with Tbilisi's perceived drift from Washington and Brussels — as confirmation of Georgia's emerging "multi-vector" foreign policy, one that simultaneously courts Tehran and Jerusalem. Yet for all of Georgia's rhetorical balancing act, one pattern remains unmistakable: any visible deepening of Georgian-Israeli cooperation, particularly in security and law enforcement, is read in Tehran as a direct provocation.

Georgia's Security Calculus and the Iran War

Given Georgia's enduring vulnerability to Russian pressure, maintaining workable relations with major regional powers, including Iran, has long been a strategic imperative. The ongoing U.S.-Iran War adds a further dimension to this calculus: any improvement in U.S.-Georgia relations cannot realistically be pursued at the cost of a serious rupture with Tehran.

Despite Georgia's unexpected foreign policy transformation, its underlying security calculus has not changed. Russian occupation and unresolved territorial disputes remain the defining challenges for Georgia's security and diplomacy. Consequently, whether or not the current Georgian government succeeds in resetting relations with Washington, Tbilisi's Iran policy is unlikely to undergo any fundamental reorientation from the course it followed before the Joe Biden administration suspended the strategic partnership.

The Gulf war adds another layer of complexity. Throughout the conflict, Iran demonstrated formidable missile and drone capabilities, repeatedly striking U.S. partner countries in the region and inflicting considerable infrastructural and financial damage. Even after the ceasefire, Iran has continued to target neighboring U.S.-aligned states and has issued warnings that others risk sharing their fate. This message was echoed by Iran's ambassador in Georgia, Seyed Ali Moujani, triggering a sharp public backlash; his Facebook page was briefly unavailable amid the controversy. The episode is a reminder that Georgian-Iranian tensions do not operate in a vacuum, and that the regional fallout from the Gulf war will continue to shape and constrain the options available to Tbilisi.

Conclusion

Georgia's "cold friendly" relationship with Iran is best read not as a policy preference but as a structural constraint — the residue of an unaltered security environment in which Russian occupation, contested territory, and limited diplomatic weight leave Tbilisi unable either to break cleanly with Tehran or to embrace it. Every apparent swing in that relationship has tracked external pressure rather than Georgian intent: when Washington pushed, Tbilisi conceded and absorbed a diplomatic cost; when its security needs reasserted themselves, ties with Iran quietly recovered. The pattern has held across three decades and three governments because the underlying conditions have not moved.

What has moved is the price of getting the balance wrong. The U.S.-Iran War has converted Iran from a difficult neighbor into a demonstrated regional striker, and the Iranian ambassador's warning in Tbilisi made clear that small states perceived to be enabling Washington are now treated as legitimate pressure points. That raises, rather than lowers, the value Tbilisi places on its "cold friendly" equilibrium — precisely the variable a U.S.-Georgia reset is most likely to demand be sacrificed.

The analytical implication for Washington is concrete. A reset built on the expectation that Tbilisi will downgrade ties with Tehran asks Georgia to assume retaliatory risk at the moment that risk is highest, and history suggests Georgia will comply only as far as its security margin allows before recalibrating. The durable version of any rapprochement is therefore one that decouples Washington's genuine interests in Georgia — corridor security, governance, resilience against Russian influence — from a demand for anti-Iran alignment. Whether the current opening becomes a reset or another short cycle of pressure and recovery will be the clearest test of whether Washington has learned that lesson.

Bako Kheladze is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Irregular Warfare Initiative, specializing in international relations and security studies, with a particular focus on Iran, the South Caucasus, and Eurasian geopolitics. He holds an M.A. in International Security Studies from the University of Leicester. Previously, he served as a Press Officer at the Embassy of Georgia to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is fluent in Georgian, English, Persian, and Russian.

When Donald Trump and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev got on the phone on July 10, their conversation ranged from the implementation of billions of dollars in commercial agreements to nuclear nonproliferation to an invitation for the American president to visit the Kazakh steppe. What was striking was not any single item but the routineness of the exchange. A US president and a Central Asian leader now talk the way close partners do—and that is new.

Consider the past eight months. Tokayev traveled to Washington in November for the first C5+1 summit ever held at the White House, where Trump announced Kazakhstan’s accession to the Abraham Accords—the initial addition of his second term. Companies from the two countries concluded 29 agreements valued around $17 billion. Trump has since extended G20 invitations to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for the Miami summit. A procession of senior Americans has passed through Astana this year, including Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), Special Envoy Sergio Gor, and a delegation from the US Chamber of Commerce. Cumulative American investment in Kazakhstan now exceeds $100 billion, and may rise to $137 billion in the medium term.

Read the full article on The National Interest.

Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.

Turan Research Center Director Joseph Epstein spoke with Kazakhstan's DKNews.kz about the country's newly enacted Constitution, which President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has framed as the start of a new historical era in Kazakhstan's statehood.

Epstein argued that the reform's most consequential element is the reintroduction of a vice presidency, which he read as a deliberate effort to build a transparent, institutionally anchored mechanism for the succession of power. For three decades, he noted, the core problem across Central Asia was never a shortage of strong leaders but the absence of predictable procedures for transferring authority — Islam Karimov left no clear succession plan and power changed hands behind closed doors, while Tajikistan and Uzbekistan largely resolved the question along dynastic lines. By writing a full succession mechanism into the Constitution, Kazakhstan is attempting something the region has scarcely seen, shifting the guarantor of stability from a single personality to a durable state institution. The real test, he emphasized, will be implementation rather than the text itself, but he called the ambition the right direction of travel.

On Tokayev's framing of the Constitution as the foundation of a "Just Kazakhstan," Epstein described the president's approach as evolutionary rather than abrupt, and said a constitution is one of the few instruments capable of preserving a chosen course beyond any single government or shift in public mood. Embedding the "Just Kazakhstan" concept directly in the Basic Law — rather than as a standalone state program — turns human-centered governance, the rule of law, and social-state principles into fundamental reference points that future governments would find far harder to abandon quietly. A document becomes truly strategic, he argued, precisely when it can constrain those who come after its authors, and that is the high bar Kazakhstan is now setting for itself.

Turning to investment and international standing, Epstein stressed that stability and predictability matter more to investors than almost anything else, and that this is where Kazakhstan holds a deliberately cultivated regional advantage. The "Law and Order" concept and the constitutional succession mechanism, he said, function partly as signals to the international investment community that the country's political and legal environment remains steady — a message that resonates given Kazakhstan's position as the world's largest uranium producer, a major center for critical minerals, and a key link in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route connecting Europe and Asia while bypassing Russia and Iran. He was candid that reputations diverge by audience: investors and governments focused on reliability will read the changes positively, while parts of the Western expert community attentive to democratic procedure will likely criticize further concentration of executive power. Kazakhstan, in his view, is betting that predictability is now a more valuable resource than political uncertainty — a wager he considers reasonable in the current geopolitical climate.

Epstein also welcomed the Constitution's enshrining of long-term national values such as national unity and social accord, calling this especially relevant in an era of globalization where a state that fails to define its own values is shaped by external trends it cannot control. For a country home to more than a hundred nationalities, he said, that diversity can be either a source of friction or a strategic asset, and Kazakhstan has consistently chosen to treat its Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Turkic, and other communities as bridges to the wider world. He underscored the need for balance — Kazakhstan is the state of the Kazakh people, so strengthening Kazakh national culture is both natural and necessary, even as every citizen, whatever their origin, should feel fully part of the state and proud to call themselves Kazakhstani. Speaking personally, Epstein described Kazakhstan as a country he knows well through his own family, and called the combination of a strong Kazakh national foundation with genuine respect for all citizens one of the country's most underrated strengths.

Looking ahead, Epstein cautioned against expecting a sharp break, noting that constitutions rarely create a new political course and more often accelerate trends already underway. He expects continued momentum behind Kazakhstan's role as a key state of the Middle Corridor, further investment in mining, critical minerals, and transport-logistics infrastructure, and more stable conditions for long-term capital. Politically, he flagged the August elections to the Kurultai as the first serious test of the new legislative model and the eventual appointment of a vice president as a revealing indicator of how succession will be built — but identified 2029 as the decisive threshold. If the new constitutional model performs as hoped, he concluded, the coming years could lay the groundwork for what Central Asia has struggled for decades to achieve: a peaceful, predictable, and fully constitutional transfer of supreme state power.

Read the full interview at DKNews.kz (Russian).

Joseph Epstein is the Director of the Turan Research Center.

The crisis in the Middle East has reinforced for China that, amid ongoing geopolitical fragmentation, economic resilience now depends on diversifying across multiple trade routes rather than relying too heavily on any single corridor. The immediate concern, of course, is energy. Prolonged disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, which appears...

Read the full article on Asia Sentinel.

Emil Avdaliani is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.

"[Israelis] have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear." That wasn't an Iranian ayatollah, a Hamas spokesman, or even a Columbia University professor. It was Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, representing NATO’s second-largest military, speaking on Turkish television last week. Israel's foreign minister called it textbook incitement to genocide. In the same interview, Fidan said Ankara has "no problem with confrontation if it comes to that."

This is no longer rhetoric without consequence. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Turkish and Israeli forces have operated in close proximity in Syria—the two countries now effectively share a border there. In 2025, it was reported Turkish F-16s and Israeli aircraft came into direct contact in Syrian airspace during an Israeli strike, prompting urgent talks on a deconfliction mechanism, though Turkey denied this happened. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called Zionism an existential threat to Turkey and asserted that Israeli operations in Syria and Lebanon endanger his country. His interior minister vowed last month that Turkey would one day retake Jerusalem.

Read the full article on Newsweek.

Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.