POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND CENTRAL ASIAN STATES , 1991-2010

During the post-cold war era a power vacuum has been created in Central Asia. The great powers like United States, Russia, China and European Union want to exert their own influence in the region to meet their geo-strategic interests. The other countries like Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia also want to strengthen their historical, cultural, linguistic, economic and political relations with the Central Asian States. The oil and natural gas rich Central Asian States are a great source of attraction for the developed world in general and United States and Russia in particular. Iran sharing a long border with Turkmenistan, sea route with Kazakhstan and linguistic ties with Tajikistan has a comparative advantage in bringing the Central Asian States in its own fold.

The Central Asian Republics emerged as independent sovereign countries in December, 1991 as a result of Soviet Union disintegration. Central Asia has inappropriately been called ‘Inmost Asia’ or ‘Innermost Asia’ but in fact, Central Asia is not Inmost Asia or Innermost Asia, it is just Central Asia. It lies at the heart of Eurasian continent, completely land-locked and geographically surrounded by Iran and Afghanistan in the south, Russia in the north, China in the east, and the Eastern Europe in the west. The Caucasus stands on the other side of the Caspian Sea which is situated in the western part of Central Asia, comprising the three countries of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

Central Asian Republics (CARs) have had geographical, historical, social and cultural linkages with Iran. In fact, these republics were part of imperial Iranian state. Due to its geostrategic location of Central Asia and its adjoining region, in pre-industrial times Iran was a land bridge between inner South and East Asia on the one hand and Europe on the other hand. “In the wake of the industrial revolution Iran was drawn into the European imperialists power game in Central Asia.”[1] Iran is the eighteenth largest country in the world, with an area of 1,648,000 km square. Its borders are with Azerbaijan to the North-West, the Caspian Sea to the North, Turkmenistan to the North-East, Pakistan to the East, Turkey and Iraq to the West, and finally the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the South.

[1] See A.H.H. Abidi, Iran and Central Asian States, World Focus, March-April 1993, p-45.