Kazakhstan had barely secured a foothold in Iran’s largest commercial port when renewed military escalation made the southern route risky again. The problem for Central Asia is that Iran is more than a trading partner. For a region without direct access to the open sea, it provides one of the few overland routes to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
On June 28, Kazakhstan and Iran signed a 27-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) agreement for a Kazakh transport and logistics terminal at Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas. The agreement allocates two years for construction and the following 25 for operation. Astana expects the terminal to provide more direct access to markets in the Gulf, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa.
The project almost immediately found itself in a different reality. In July, U.S. strikes hit Iranian railway and coastal infrastructure. The Aq Taqeh Khan bridge on a rail route connecting Iran with Turkmenistan and, further north, with Kazakhstan, was damaged. There was no confirmed halt to Central Asian freight traffic, but military risk was no longer an abstract concern for carriers.
That risk has now been compounded by a new U.S. sanctions campaign. On August 24, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched what Washington calls Operation Economic Outcast, combining direct sanctions with pressure on Iran’s foreign economic partners. The United States said it would set timelines for other countries to shut down economic activity with Iran, while the scope of secondary sanctions was expanded to cover five areas: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. Nearly 60 Iran-linked individuals, entities, and vessels were also sanctioned. The United States has not publicly identified which countries could face penalties first.
War and sanctions can make the Iranian route more expensive, slower, and more dangerous. They cannot change geography.
Iran gives Central Asia overland access to ports on the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. From Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, cargo can move onward toward India, the Gulf states, and East Africa. Iran also provides a western overland route toward Turkey.
This is one of the fundamental differences between the Iranian route and the Middle Corridor, which crosses the Caspian Sea before continuing through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The Middle Corridor requires cargo to move between rail and maritime transport. Iran offers the possibility of a continuous overland chain while also providing access to ports connected to the Indian Ocean.
For Kazakhstan, the southern route is already more than a plan. Trade with Iran increased by 26.4% in 2025 to $430.2 million. Freight traffic along the International North-South Transport Corridor reached 3.5 million tons, while rail traffic between Kazakhstan and Iran increased by 69%. It is this expanding transport network that is now exposed to greater military and sanctions risks.
There is another factor. A free trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, entered into force on May 15, 2025. It significantly reduced tariff barriers to trade in goods between the two sides.
Uzbekistan offers an even clearer illustration of why direct bilateral trade does not fully capture Iran’s importance to Central Asia.
In 2025, about $3.9 billion worth of Uzbek imports transited Iran, equivalent to roughly 9% of the country’s total imports. Around $1 billion of that consisted of technological equipment. In the opposite direction, approximately $1.4 billion worth of Uzbek goods passed through Iran, equivalent to about 10% of exports excluding gold. The figures come from Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Economy and Finance in its Fiscal Strategy for 2027–2029.
For Tashkent, disruption to transit may therefore pose a greater threat than the loss of direct bilateral trade. The ministry estimates that disruptions, higher transportation costs, and other foreign-trade effects stemming from tensions in the Middle East could cost Uzbekistan $1–1.5 billion, or approximately 0.7–1% of GDP.
In other words, a country can trade relatively little with Iran itself while still depending heavily on routes running through Iranian territory.
In August, Dushanbe added another consideration to the transport equation: energy.
Tajikistan has requested 2.55 million tons of crude oil and petroleum products from Iran: 2 million tons of crude, 300,000 tons of diesel, 150,000 tons of gasoline, and 100,000 tons of aviation fuel. The proposal was discussed in Tehran on August 15. For now, it remains a request rather than a purchase agreement: no price, supplier, or delivery schedule has been announced.
These four Central Asian countries have different interests. Kazakhstan needs ports and railways. Uzbekistan needs transit. Tajikistan is also looking at oil and petroleum products. Turkmenistan shares a border with Iran and has long been connected to it through rail and energy infrastructure.
What they share is an interest in access to the south.
India faces a similar dilemma. New Delhi has invested for years in Chabahar, Iran’s port on the Gulf of Oman. For India, it provides a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan. In 2024, India Ports Global Limited signed a 10-year contract to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal. U.S. sanctions, however, have long complicated the project.
In October 2025, Washington granted India a six-month sanctions exemption for Chabahar. That exemption expired in April 2026. New Delhi and Tehran were still negotiating the future of India’s presence at the port in August.
Afghanistan has already demonstrated the practical value of having alternative routes. When border crossings with Pakistan were repeatedly disrupted in 2025, Afghan businesses redirected trade through Iran, particularly Chabahar, as well as through Central Asian routes involving Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.
None of this means Central Asia should deepen its dependence on Iran. If anything, the current crisis points in the opposite direction.
The region is simultaneously developing the Middle Corridor across the Caspian and South Caucasus, the North-South route through Iran, routes through China, and prospective trans-Afghan railways. These projects make more sense as insurance against one another than as mutually exclusive alternatives.
Each has its own vulnerability. The Middle Corridor faces capacity constraints on the Caspian and across port and rail networks in several countries. The Russian route carries sanctions and military risks. The Iranian route now faces military threats alongside secondary sanctions and growing insurance and banking constraints. Trans-Afghan projects require billions of dollars for infrastructure that largely has yet to be built.
Even several corridors do not automatically create a resilient transport network. Rerouting a container from one corridor to another is more complicated than drawing another line on a map: tariffs, paperwork, customs procedures, digital systems, and schedules all change.
The new U.S. sanctions campaign makes doing business with Iran more difficult and more expensive. Military strikes show that even physical infrastructure can no longer be taken for granted. But for Central Asia, the answer to these risks is unlikely to be abandoning the Iranian route. It is more likely to involve ensuring that Iran is one option among several rather than the only route available when another corridor fails.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the publication, its affiliates, or any other organizations mentioned.
