James Durso
The U.S. and Israeli attacks last month on Iran to “obliterate” its nuclear program may have hit another target: Central Asia’s interests in accesses the large Iranian market and use Iran’s transport links to trade with the wider world.
Iran’s “Look East” policy was launched by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 to improve relations with Russia, China, and India to counter Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear program and improve the economy. It was continued by Ahmadinejad’s successors and now includes Central Asia, a region with which Iran has had numerous recent engagements.
On May 15, 2025, a free trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan) came into force.
In June 2023, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met Iran’s then-President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The 2023 meeting netted cooperation pacts in agriculture, energy, customs affairs, sports, science, technology and innovation, cultural exchanges, health care, Chabahar port, the environment, industry, and tourism.
The June 2023 meetings followed a March 2023 visit by Uzbekistan’s foreign minister, who met Iran’s minister of foreign affairs and minister of industry, mines, and trade. Afterward, the parties announced efforts to increase trade turnover, and to foster business links and people-to-people ties. The ministerial meetings built on the September 2022 visit by Raisi to Uzbekistan that produced 17 agreements in areas such as energy, transport, and agriculture, and discussed how to increase trade.
In September 2022, Raisi had declared that improving relations with Central Asia was “one of the first priorities of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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