The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
The Korea Times
amn_close.png
amn_bl.png
National
  • Politics
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Multicultural Community
  • Defense
  • Environment & Animals
  • Law & Crime
  • Society
  • Health & Science
amn_bl.png
Business
  • Tech
  • Bio
  • Companies
amn_bl.png
Finance
  • Companies
  • Economy
  • Markets
  • Cryptocurrency
amn_bl.png
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
amn_bl.png
Lifestyle
  • Travel & Food
  • Trends
  • People & Events
  • Books
  • Around Town
  • Fortune Telling
amn_bl.png
Entertainment & Arts
  • K-pop
  • Films
  • Shows & Dramas
  • Music
  • Theater & Others
amn_bl.png
Sports
amn_bl.png
World
  • SCMP
  • Asia
amn_bl.png
Video
  • Korean Storytellers
  • POPKORN
  • Culture
  • People
  • News
amn_bl.png
Photos
  • Photo News
  • Darkroom
amn_NK.png amn_DR.png amn_LK.png amn_LE.png
  • bt_fb_on_2022.svgbt_fb_over_2022.svg
  • bt_twitter_on_2022.svgbt_twitter_over_2022.svg
  • bt_youtube_on_2022.svgbt_youtube_over_2022.svg
  • bt_instagram_on_2022.svgbt_instagram_over_2022.svg
  • Login
  • Register
  • Login
  • Register
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
  • 1

    INTERVIEWKorean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years

  • 3

    Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas

  • 5

    Korean firms balk at donating to fund compensating victims of Japan's forced labor

  • 7

    World water day

  • 9

    Main opposition leader indicted, faces calls to resign

  • 11

    Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon'

  • 13

    Apple working on expanding Apple Pay service in Korea: senior executive

  • 15

    Childbirths sink 6% to fresh low in January

  • 17

    Yoo Yeon-seok threatens to sue people spreading accusations about him

  • 19

    Hyundai Heavy achieves world's first 200 million BHP milestone

  • 2

    Zebra captured after escaping from Seoul zoo

  • 4

    Consumers choose to travel abroad over purchasing luxury goods

  • 6

    Sexual assaults by Korean diplomats continue despite zero-tolerance policy

  • 8

    Outback Steakhouse sees sales soar as it opens stores in large shopping malls

  • 10

    Samsung, SK avoid worst-case scenario as US 'guardrails' are less stringent than feared

  • 12

    Korean pension fund hit by overseas banking crisis

  • 14

    Will exempting foreign nannies from minimum wage boost Korea's birth rate?

  • 16

    Sandstorm from China forecast to push up fine dust levels in Korea

  • 18

    Campaign launched to promote equal treatment for multicultural families

  • 20

    Investment banks compete for HMM sale advisory roles

Close scrollclosebutton

Close for 24 hours

Open
  • The Korea Times
  • search
  • all menu
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Photos
  • Video
  • World
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment & Art
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Business
  • National
  • North Korea
Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Thoughts of the Times
  • Cartoon
  • Today in History
  • Blogs
  • Tribune Service
  • Blondie & Garfield
  • Letter to President
  • Letter to the Editor
Fri, March 24, 2023 | 09:55
Guest Column
Iranian naval activity shines light on Caspian Sea rivalries
Posted : 2020-06-09 17:11
Updated : 2020-06-09 17:11
Print PreviewPrint Preview
Font Size UpFont Size Up
Font Size DownFont Size Down
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • kakaolink
  • whatsapp
  • reddit
  • mailto
  • link

By James M. Dorsey

Iranian naval activity in the Gulf, and Turkish maritime expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean, have hogged the limelight, but Russian and Gulf policymakers are also watching with Argus eyes moves by the Islamic Republic in the Caspian Sea.

Iran's navy is no match for its Russian counterpart and Iran's naval presence in the Caspian is miniscule.

Yet, recent Iranian posturing and statements, coupled with visits by senior commanders to naval facilities and a shipyard on Iran's Caspian coast where a destroyer is being repaired and modernized, and diplomatic efforts to tighten relations with former Soviet littoral states, have raised eyebrows in Moscow as well as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Senior military officials, including Iranian navy commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, his deputy, Admiral Habibullah Sayari, and Admiral Amir Rastegari, who oversees naval construction, stressed the importance to Iranian national security of the Caspian on tours of facilities on the coast.

They also suggested closer cooperation and joint naval exercises with countries like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

"The Caspian Sea is the sea of peace and friendship and we can share our military tactics with our neighbors in this region. We are fully ready to expand ties with neighboring and friendly countries," Admiral Khanzadi said in April.

The Iranian moves are about more than only strengthening its military presence in a basin that it shares with Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

A 2018 agreement among the littoral states, made necessary by the collapse of the Soviet Union, barred entry to the basin by military vessels of non-littoral states but failed to regulate the divvying-up of the sea's abundant resources.

Closer naval ties with Caspian Sea states would allow Iran to leverage its position at a time when Central Asians worry about greater Chinese security engagement in their part of the world that undermines a tacit understanding in which Russia shouldered responsibility for regional security while China focused on economic development.

Increased Chinese engagement raises the specter of the export of aspects of the People's Republic's 21st century, Orwellian surveillance state amid widespread anti-Chinese sentiment as a result of China's brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the troubled northwestern province of Xinjiang.

Hard hit by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, Central Asians are torn between wanting to benefit from Chinese willingness to revive Belt and Road-related projects and their concerns that enhanced Chinese influence could impact their lives.

Popular sentiment forced Kyrgyzstan early on in the pandemic to cancel a $275 million logistics project. The Kazakh foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador to explain an article published on a Chinese website that asserted that the Central Asian country wanted to return to Chinese rule.

Kazakh media called for China and the U.S. to leave Kazakhstan alone after the Chinese foreign ministry claimed that the coronavirus had originated in U.S.-funded laboratories in the country.

Iranian efforts, boosted by the Indian-funded deep sea port of Chabahar that serves as a conduit for Indian exports to Central Asia, to benefit in the margin from big Asian power rivalry, has opened the region, including the Caspian basin, to greater competition with the Islamic Republic's Gulf opponents, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran hopes that geography and Central Asian distrust of past Saudi promotion of its ultra-conservative strand of Islam will work to its advantage.

That hope may not be in vain. Tajik Foreign Minister Sirodjidin Muhriddin, despite past troubled relations with the Islamic Republic, opted a year ago to ignore a Saudi invitation to attend an Organization of Islamic Cooperation conference in the kingdom and visit Iran instead.

Iran has since agreed to invest $4 billion in the completion of a five kilometer-long tunnel that will link the Tajik capital of Dushanbe with the country's second-largest city, Khujand.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have fared somewhat better in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

Saudi utility developer ACWA Power, in which China's state-owned Silk Road Fund has a 49 percent stake, and the UAE's Masdar or Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company agreed to invest in Azerbaijani renewable energy projects.

ACWA Power also recently signed agreements in Uzbekistan worth $2.5 billion for the construction of a power plant and a wind farm.

Perhaps Iran's strongest trump card is that by linking the Caspian to the Arabian Sea it can provide what the Gulf states cannot: cheap and short access to the Indo-Pacific.

Already, Iran is written all over Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev's transportation infrastructure plans. A decree issued in late 2017 identified various corridors as key to his plans, including the extension of a rail line that connects Uzbekistan's Termez to Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif to the Afghan city of Herat from where it would branch out to Iran's Bandar Abbas port, Chabahar; and Bazargan on the Iranian-Turkish border.

"As Tashkent seeks to diversify its economic relations, Iran continues to loom large in these calculations. For Uzbekistan, not only do Iranian ports offer the shortest and cheapest route to the sea, but several future rail projects cannot be accomplished without Tehran's active participation," said Central Asia analyst Umida Hashimova.


Dr. James M. Dorsey (jmd@jmdonline.org) is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is also an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg's Institute of Fan Culture in Germany. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.



 
Top 10 Stories
1[INTERVIEW] Korean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years INTERVIEWKorean adoptee in Germany reunites with birth family after 42 years
2Will exempting foreign nannies from minimum wage boost Korea's birth rate? Will exempting foreign nannies from minimum wage boost Korea's birth rate?
3Retailers rush to adopt Apple Pay system Retailers rush to adopt Apple Pay system
4Daughter of North Korean dictator seen wearing $1,900 Dior jacket Daughter of North Korean dictator seen wearing $1,900 Dior jacket
5Korea to start mass production of KF-21 in 2024 Korea to start mass production of KF-21 in 2024
6[INTERVIEW] Expert pitches Laotian rural reform to solve NK's chronic food shortages INTERVIEWExpert pitches Laotian rural reform to solve NK's chronic food shortages
7Will Apple Pay launch boost local iPhone sales? Will Apple Pay launch boost local iPhone sales?
8[INTERVIEW] 'Welcome to world of art therapy' INTERVIEW'Welcome to world of art therapy'
9[INTERVIEW] Forbes-listed entrepreneur pursues partnerships with Samsung, LG, SK to help Ukraine INTERVIEWForbes-listed entrepreneur pursues partnerships with Samsung, LG, SK to help Ukraine
10Indonesian students advise Korean bank on entering Indonesian market Indonesian students advise Korean bank on entering Indonesian market
Top 5 Entertainment News
1Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas Revenge rises as key theme in K-dramas
2Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon' Jeon Jong-seo discusses her first Hollywood role in 'Mona Lisa and Blood Moon'
3Yoo Yeon-seok threatens to sue people spreading accusations about him Yoo Yeon-seok threatens to sue people spreading accusations about him
4SF9's Jaeyoon starts mandatory military service SF9's Jaeyoon starts mandatory military service
5Lee Som, Ahn Jae-hong to play married couple in Tving's new series Lee Som, Ahn Jae-hong to play married couple in Tving's new series
DARKROOM
  • Turkey-Syria earthquake

    Turkey-Syria earthquake

  • Nepal plane crash

    Nepal plane crash

  • Brazil capital uprising

    Brazil capital uprising

  • Happy New Year 2023

    Happy New Year 2023

  • World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

    World Cup 2022 Final - Argentina vs France

CEO & Publisher : Oh Young-jin
Digital News Email : webmaster@koreatimes.co.kr
Tel : 02-724-2114
Online newspaper registration No : 서울,아52844
Date of registration : 2020.02.05
Masthead : The Korea Times
Copyright © koreatimes.co.kr. All rights reserved.
  • About Us
  • Introduction
  • History
  • Contact Us
  • Products & Services
  • Subscribe
  • E-paper
  • RSS Service
  • Content Sales
  • Site Map
  • Policy
  • Code of Ethics
  • Ombudsman
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Service
  • Copyright Policy
  • Family Site
  • Hankook Ilbo
  • Dongwha Group