Persian march

Iranian President heads to Central Asia

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on a trip to Central Asia yesterday. The main goal of the Persian campaign is Bishkek, where the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be held tomorrow . The Iranian leader, as reported by the Tehran Times, intends to meet with key players in the region - the presidents of Russia, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Currently, Iran has observer status in the SCO, which clearly does not correspond to Tehran’s ambitions.

Before ascending to the Bishkek podium, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had already visited Kabul in Afghanistan yesterday and arrived in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. The visit to Afghanistan was his first visit to a neighboring country. Ahmadinejad's intention to make Iran a key player in the region where the interests of Russia, the United States and China intersect may become a new unpredictable factor in the “great game” for political control over the energy resources of Central Asia and their transportation routes.

“Iran, of course, seeks to expand its influence in post-Soviet Asia, but its capabilities are limited,” Andrei Grozin, head of the Central Asia and Kazakhstan department at the Institute of CIS Countries, noted to Vremya Novostey. “There are ethnic differences between Iranians and residents of the states in the region. Iran has a definite chance of strengthening its presence only in Tajikistan. But even there, due to the heterogeneity of the elite and population, it would be a clear exaggeration to say that Iran can gain some serious positions and displace Russia, China and the Western powers. It will be very difficult for Iran to enter the field of historical influence of Russia and China,” the expert is confident.

The Iranian president is launching a diplomatic offensive in Central Asia at a difficult time for his country. The resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in December 2006 and March 2007 demanding that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment have not been implemented. Tighter sanctions could follow at any time. Iran's active contacts with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Union, which began this summer, have not yet led to concrete and public agreements. In addition, the United States is increasingly accusing Iran of secretly supplying weapons to the Afghan Taliban, who are fighting against the forces of the American coalition and NATO peacekeepers. Such accusations from the lips of Americans usually do not bode well for the country to which they are addressed. Yesterday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indignantly rejected allegations of assistance to the Taliban at a press conference in Kabul. And his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai said that “Iran is a country friendly to Afghanistan, which is making efforts to strengthen ties between our countries.” Kabul and Tehran are particularly concerned about the problem of one million Afghan refugees who have found refuge on Iranian territory.

In order to counteract the international isolation of Iran organized by Washington and strengthen its position in the strategically important Central Asian region, Tehran can put several trump cards on the geopolitical table. First of all, these are quite close economic ties with local capitals. In particular, Iran is the largest consumer of Turkmen gas after Russia. The activity of bilateral contacts is evidenced by the fact that Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran just two months ago.

However, friendship with the Turkmens does not prevent the Iranians from making their own global plans. The implementation of the Nabucco project to transport Iranian gas to Europe would allow Tehran to become a regional gas giant, displacing Ashgabat. This project enjoys the support of the European Union, but the United States has a cool attitude towards it due to the well-known antipathy of the White House towards the regime of the Iranian ayatollahs.

The second factor that Iran, which is striving for regional leadership, can play on is religious. However, there are also difficulties here. “Until now, the elites of almost all post-Soviet Asian states have a wary attitude towards the Iranian development model,” Andrei Grozin emphasized in a conversation with VN. “Even if we recall the very short period of time when the elites of post-Soviet Asia were fascinated by “Islamic quests” in the first half of the 1990s, even then such an Islamic renaissance was oriented not towards Iran, but much more towards Saudi Arabia. In other words, not the Persian, but the Arab model,” the expert recalled.

Petr ISKENDEROV