How the Iran War Puts Central Asia Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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.

Previously:

ISIS has its sights set on a new potential ally—Uyghur jihadi groups

Rep. Perry reveals what some of us already knew about USAID

BLA: U.S. Proxies in Balochistan document

CIA & Uygur militants: US & TERRORISM IN XINJIANG

Uygur militants: *Xinjiang*