Central Asia and the South Caucasus Become Stakeholders in the Middle East
Leaders in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, once considered outliers answerable only to Moscow, are emerging as actors in the political and security dynamics of the core Middle East.
Kazakhstan has established itself as a Middle East player by joining the Abraham Accords and Trump’s Board of Peace, and it reportedly will announce this week that it is contributing personnel to the International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza.
Azerbaijan has become a key Israeli and U.S. partner in the fight against Iran, and Trump is pressing the country to join the Abraham Accords.
U.S. influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus has expanded as Moscow’s faltering war on Ukraine has stretched the Kremlin’s resources and capabilities.
For much of the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the newly independent states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus were viewed by Washington policymakers primarily through the prism of Russia policy. The countries in these regions were largely run by ex-Soviet strongmen who prioritized internal security against real and perceived Islamist threats and held little regard for international standards of human rights practices. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, however, received immediate attention from Western leaders as potential energy partners, but, with the region’s infrastructure underdeveloped, implementation of major projects such as the East-West oil and gas corridor was slow and capital-intensive. According to one expert’s analysis: “For much of the 1990s and 2000s, this region was viewed in Tehran (and in other Middle East capitals) as a secondary and relatively inert strategic environment — fragmented, inward-looking, and largely insulated from Middle Eastern security dynamics. The South Caucasus, in particular, was not perceived (by Middle East leaders) as a primary arena of confrontation but rather as a buffer zone shaped predominantly by Russian influence.”
In the late 1990s, and particularly after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 and subsequently sheltered the leaders of al-Qaeda, U.S. officials sought close counterterrorism and anti-Taliban partnerships with Central Asian leaders. That cooperation expanded and intensified following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the resulting U.S.-led effort to remove the Taliban from power and stabilize Afghanistan. Several Central Asian leaders permitted the U.S. to station military personnel and combat aircraft for missions in Afghanistan. These joint counterterrorism efforts have endured as militants from Central Asia have constituted significant portions of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS), and the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISK) — all of which are active not only in the Middle East and South Asia, but in ungoverned space in Africa and elsewhere. Some Islamist fighters who helped the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization topple the Assad regime in Syria hail from Central Asia. U.S. officials, now partners of Damascus, are pressing the new Syrian government to expel foreign fighters from its ranks and from the country, but progress on that issue has been slow.
As the perceived threat from Iran’s nuclear and missile programs escalated after 2002, leaders in the South Caucasus and Central Asia were viewed by Israel, the United States, and others as potentially useful partners in the Middle East. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago, which has drained the Kremlin’s military strength and financial resources, widened the opportunity for the leaders in Central Asia and the Caucasus to emerge as actors independent of Russia. With Russian forces stretched thin on the Ukraine battlefield, Moscow’s peacekeeping unit in Armenia was unable to hold back Baku’s 2023 offensive that recaptured all of the Armenian-inhabited enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Most of the ethnic Armenians in that territory fled after the Azerbaijani offensive, and the Russian failure prompted leaders in Yerevan to reorient toward the United States for additional protection.
As an emerging power in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan, which borders Iran and shares the Caspian coast with it, attracted additional interest from Israel. The two have had quiet diplomatic relations since 1992, shortly after Azerbaijan became independent. Baku, long at odds with Tehran over Iran’s Islamist orientation and the aspirations of Iranian Azeris for integration with Azerbaijan, saw common cause with Israel against the Islamic Republic. Israel expanded its engagement with Azerbaijan as a window into and a base of intelligence operations against Iran –—a partnership reinforced by Washington’s own decade-long security cooperation with Baku against both Iran and Russia. For years, credible reports — not confirmed on the record by either Israeli or Azerbaijani officials — have indicated Israeli agents have been able to use Azerbaijani territory to infiltrate into Iran to carry out operations in Israel’s longstanding “shadow war” against Iran.
Perhaps in gratitude for Israel’s supply of weapons, which, along with Turkish supplies, were crucial to Baku’s regaining Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan opened an embassy in Israel in 2023 and publicly supported Israel after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. In December 2023, the Israeli outlet Ynet noted that “Azerbaijan is the only Muslim country in the world supporting Israel in the war [against Hamas and Hezbollah].” Azerbaijan was willing to publicize its expanding relations with Israel despite pressure from Türkiye, which has been among the most vocally critical of Israel’s tactics in Gaza.
In the June 2025 Twelve-Day War, numerous reports indicated that Israel staged some of its drone attacks on Iranian targets from Azerbaijani territory. The reports prompted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to urge Azerbaijan to investigate them, but Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev denied them. Yet Azerbaijan has also sought to calibrate its relations with Tehran. Aliyev, in a phone call with Pezeshkian on Saturday, indicated opposition to a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran’s leadership for its killing of tens of thousands of protesters in the January uprising. Aliyev was quoted as saying, “Every country, including Azerbaijan, should think about stability around and beyond its borders,” adding that Azerbaijan is ready to contribute to de-escalating tensions.
The expanding U.S. and Israeli security ties to Azerbaijan, coupled with Moscow’s distraction, contributed to Trump’s decision to broker a final Nagorno-Karabakh peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. That accord, signed in August, was mostly symbolic but was accompanied by an agreement for the U.S. to lead the development of a cross-Armenia transit corridor, the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity,” or TRIPP. The TRIPP is intended, in large part, to obstruct Iran’s land access to Armenia and the rest of the South Caucasus. Signing a peace accord under Trump’s sponsorship earned Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan invitations to join the Trump-led Board of Peace, a supervisory body for the governance of Gaza. Both leaders signed the Board’s charter as founding members on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia has heretofore been extensively involved in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but their participation on the Board of Peace draws both Armenia and Azerbaijan more deeply into core Middle East security issues. Trump is likely to press both leaders to deploy forces to the Gaza peacekeeping body outlined in Trump’s Gaza peace plan: the International Stabilization Force (ISF). Trump is also likely to press Azerbaijan, as a Muslim state, to join the Abraham Accords and publicly normalize relations with Israel.
If it joins the Abraham Accords, Azerbaijan would be the second former Soviet republic to do so. President Kassim-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, an increasingly independent and pivotal actor in Central Asia, announced that step in November. Like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan has maintained diplomatic ties with Israel since gaining independence. A Kazakh government statement said: “Our anticipated accession to the Abraham Accords represents a natural and logical continuation of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy course — grounded in dialogue, mutual respect, and regional stability.” Kazakhstan announced its participation in the Abraham Accords on the sidelines of a White House summit with Trump and five Central Asian leaders, during which he announced trade, diplomatic, and mineral deals to strengthen U.S. ties with the region. At the same time, some experts warn that Astana’s joining the Abraham Accords might align the country with other Arab Gulf state parties to the Accords, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In so doing, Astana risks offending those Gulf leaders, such as Saudi de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who demand clear progress toward a Palestinian state as a condition of normalizing relations with Israel.
Assessing oil-rich Kazakhstan as an increasingly influential partner, Trump invited Tokayev to join the Board of Peace. As did Aliyev and Pashinyan, Tokayev attended the Board’s charter-signing ceremony in Davos, taking the opportunity to deepen his partnership with the Trump team. Perhaps even more significantly, sources report that Trump will announce this week that Kazakhstan will join Italy, Kosovo, Albania, and others in supplying forces for the ISF. That contribution, if finalized, would place Astana at the center of Middle East security issues. Whether Tokayev or other force donors will authorize their troops to demobilize Hamas, by force, if necessary, is not known.
Other Central Asian states are considering expanded roles in the core Middle East. Uzbekistan, a key U.S. counterterrorism partner, has reportedly expressed interest in joining the Abraham Accords. Amid speculation, U.S. officials see Turkmenistan, which borders northeastern Iran, as a potential ally against the Islamic Republic. U.S. Special Envoy for Central Asia Sergio Gor and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll recently visited Ashkhabad. They met with Turkmenistan’s President Serdar Berdimuhamedow to discuss “deepening mutually beneficial relations with the U.S.,” the state news agency Turkmenistan Today reported on January 23. Washington has increased its economic engagement with Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer, but strategic relations have been limited by Turkmenistan’s strict adherence to a policy of “neutrality”—a stance that prevented it from helping Washington contain the first Taliban regime in Afghanistan.