The Central Asian republics are not keen on seeing Iran collapse right on their borders.

The drones that struck Azerbaijan on March 5 did more than wound four people. They shattered the illusion that Central Asia could sit out the Iran War—and exposed the limits of American influence in a region Washington thought it was winning.

When allegedly Iranian UAVs hit Azerbaijan’s Nakhchevan exclave—targeting the international airport terminal, narrowly missing a nearby school—Baku’s response was swift and furious. President Ilham Aliyev called it a “terrorist act,” and vowed retaliation. Iran categorically denied it launched the strike, blaming Israel for an alleged “false flag” operation instead.

But the reaction in Central Asia was far more telling. And for American and Israeli strategists who had celebrated Kazakhstan’s entry into the Abraham Accords just months earlier, it carried an uncomfortable message.

They had hoped that Kazakhstan would join in a new alliance of “moderate Muslim states” stretching from the Gulf to the Caspian, aligned with Israel and hostile to Iran. The reality has proved to be more complicated, however.

Within hours, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev condemned the attack. But he also expressed hope for a joint investigation with Iran into the incident, as well as “the resolution of the conflict through diplomatic means in order to avoid an escalation of tensions in the region.”

That’s remarkable language. Baku had just declared a “terrorist act” by Iran. And Kazakhstan responded by calling for a joint investigation with the alleged perpetrator. 

Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev followed with “resolute condemnation” of the attack and full solidarity with Baku, while pointedly omitting to mention Iran.

The choreography was deliberate: Central Asia backed a Turkic sibling while refusing to burn bridges with Iran. It shows that the foreign policy of Central Asia’s largest states remains what it has always been: multivector and pragmatic. Condemn the act, protect the relationship, and keep all doors open.

So far, this multifaceted balancing act has kept the Central Asian nations relatively safe.
While America’s Gulf allies have spent the past week watching Iranian missiles strike their territory, there haven’t been any attacks in Central Asia despite the region’s geographic proximity to Iran. 

When Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan closed US military bases in Karshi-Khanabad and Manas air bases in the mid-2000s and 2014, respectively, the decision was criticized in Washington as a setback for counterterrorism cooperation. In hindsight, it looks like foresight.

The network of American installations across the Gulf—designed to project power and reassure allies—has instead provided Iran with a pre-mapped set of targets. When Washington goes to war, Arab capitals absorb the shock.

Central Asia, by contrast, finds itself in an unexpectedly fortunate position. By removing American bases, the region removed itself as a direct target. This was the logical extension of the multivector foreign policy that has defined Central Asian statecraft since 1991.

While strikes on the Gulf and Azerbaijan confirm that a desperate Iran is a more dangerous Iran, they may prove to be the least consequential threat Central Asia faces. The real danger is metastasizing quietly, beneath the headlines.

For years, Iran served as a bulwark against the very force that Central Asian security officials consider their most existential threat: Sunni jihadist extremism. Prolonged war, followed by Iran’s collapse, would inflict a severe blow to that security architecture.

The risk posed by armed non-state groups exploiting the current instability in Iran is significant, especially since Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), the Central Asian ISIS franchise, has already demonstrated both the intent and capability to strike inside and outside Iran. With Iranian forces stretched across multiple fronts, ISIS-K is carefully looking for security vacuums to exploit.

ISIS has already signaled its intentions. According to Tom O’Connor’s reporting in Newsweek, just days before the opening US-Israeli strikes, the group’s official Al-Naba magazine published an article proclaiming that the “Iranian ship is on the verge of sinking.” Its ISIS-K affiliate has demonstrated the ability to penetrate deep into Iran, conducting a terrorist attack in January 2024, at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Al-Quds commander General Qassem Soleimani’s assassination.

But the threat extends beyond Iran’s borders. ISIS-K has already targeted Central Asia. The group was also responsible for the Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow that killed 145 people in 2024, carried out by Tajik migrant recruits. The group is active in neighbouring Afghanistan, which also makes Central Asia vulnerable to spillovers.

The implications are stark. If the US-Israeli campaign succeeds in further weakening or collapsing Iran, the primary regional opponent of ISIS will have been neutralized. ISIS-K will have gained territorial footholds and strategic depth from which to threaten the broader region. Central Asian states’ capacity, already constrained by the instability emanating from Afghanistan, will be further stretched.

There is another dimension to the threat, one that Central Asian governments watch with particular unease. The scenarios for Iran’s “territorial fragmentation” being discussed in some Western and Israeli circles—creating entities like a “South Azerbaijan” or a separate “Balochistan”—send a dangerous signal.

For states with their own ethnic complexities—Uzbekistan with its Tajik minority and Karakalpak region, Kyrgyzstan with its Uzbek population, Tajikistan with its Pamiri communities in the mountainous Badakshan region—the precedent of redrawing borders along ethnic lines is deeply unwelcome. Any state in the region could theoretically face similar separatist challenges if such a precedent is set.

The convergence of these factors—a weakened Iran, a resurgent ISIS-K, a volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and the specter of ethnic separatism— has the potential to significantly worsen the threat environment facing Central Asia.

There are also humanitarian and economic challenges. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan launched emergency efforts to rescue thousands of their citizens stranded in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or Qatar. The report has highlighted the vulnerability of Central Asia’s southern trade corridors to disruption.

But the economic disruptions, however painful, will pass. Citizens will be rescued from the Gulf, one way or another. The strategic threats will not dissipate, however. If the war in Iran accelerates the resurgence of ISIS, if it opens space for ethnic separatism, if it permanently dismantles the security architecture that kept jihadi extremism at bay, then the consequences for Central Asia will be measured not in disrupted trade routes but in lost lives.

There is a bitter irony in all of this. The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran in the name of security. But for the states of Central Asia—watching from the periphery and eyeing their borders with renewed unease—the war looks less like a solution than a threat to their stability.

About the Author: Eldar Mamedov

Eldar Mamedov is a Brussels-based foreign policy expert. He has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington and Madrid. Since 2009, Mamedov has served as a political advisor for the Social Democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the EP delegations for inter-parliamentary relations with Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. Find him on X: @EldarMamedov4.

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