View from Central Asia: Prospects for Iran’s Full Membership of the SCO
While Central Asia is concerned about Iran’s tense relationship with the United States, the region increasingly relies on the Persian nation for connectivity.
By Sharanya Rajiv, Senior Analyst and Manager of Operations
Since joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an observer state in 2005, Iran has consistently lobbied to become a full member. While Iran’s applications for full membership in 2008 and 2010 were unsuccessful given UN sanctions against the country, it is important to note that in those years, the SCO had not even finalized the procedure to grant member status to applicants.
Much has changed since then. In 2014, the SCO approved the procedure for granting membership and has already accepted two new members: India and Pakistan. Two years later, as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, UN sanctions against the Persian nation were lifted, alongside some EU and US sanctions in exchange for, ostensibly, curbing its domestic nuclear program. While Iran did not broach the question of full membership at the most recent SCO summit in November 2020, Iran’s state-owned news agency did make it clear where they stood on the issue, stating that Iran’s full membership in the SCO would be critical for Central Asian and Middle Eastern security. Add to this that Russia has also reiterated its support for Iran’s full membership in the SCO, and this suggests that the question of Iran’s full membership in the organization will likely be revisited in the future.
How do Central Asian member states of the SCO perceive the issue of potentially granting full membership for Iran? Do international tensions related to Iran’s nuclear program influence perceptions in Central Asia? This article examines Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek media sentiment toward Iran in the SCO to determine how they perceive Iran’s potential full membership in the SCO. It also seeks to identify the factors that influence Central Asian perception of the issue.
How do Central Asian member states of the SCO perceive the issue of potentially granting full membership for Iran? Do international tensions related to Iran’s nuclear program influence perceptions in Central Asia?
Central Asia: Aware of US-Iran Tensions
Central Asian media coverage of Iran in the SCO follows the ebbs and flows of international diplomacy with Iran, especially U.S.-Iran tensions.
After years of tensions, sanctions, and negotiations, six world powers known as the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed to lift nuclear sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iranian limits on its nuclear program in a nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, on July 14, 2015. The deal was formally adopted by all parties toward the end of that year and international sanctions were eased from 2016 onwards. While mentions of Iran in conjunction with the SCO saw minor increases in some Central Asian countries leading up to this moment, as sanctions were lifted, mentions rose by a mammoth 63% in 2016 compared to the previous year and hit an all time peak.
As sanctions were lifted, mentions rose by a mammoth 63% in 2016 compared to the previous year and hit an all time peak.
However, after U.S. President Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, tensions between Iran and the United States began to increase. As he threatened to renegotiate the deal and imposed new non-nuclear sanctions (that didn’t violate the JCPOA) on Iran, among other actions, mentions in Central Asian media also began a sharp descent. On May 8, 2018, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA. Despite continued support to the deal from the other P5+1 states, mentions in Central Asian media dropped to an all-time low and were less than half of the peak in 2016. In 2019, as U.S-Iran tensions continued to escalate and Iran exceeded limits placed by the JCPOA, mentions made a slight recovery.
Regional Reliance on Central Asia Influences Positive Sentiment
In a stark contrast to mentions, Central Asian media sentiment toward Iran in the SCO tells a different story — one that focuses on regional connectivity and politics.
Media sentiment in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan followed an upward trajectory until 2018, when it peaked just as mentions reached their nadir. The development of regional connectivity between Iran and Central Asia offers a useful lens to understand this. On December 3, 2014, the Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan railway was inaugurated, providing landlocked Central Asia with a shorter route to the Persion Gulf. Over the next few years, regional connectivity continued to develop — the Ashgabat Agreement, facilitating transit of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, came into force in 2016 and further expanded to include India in 2018. This highlighted Iran’s capability of linking Central Asia with other regions of the world.
The only outlier here is Tajikistan, where sentiment declined until 2017 before picking up again. Relations between Tajikistan and Iran were strained, especially since the latter invited the head of a Tajik opposition group, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, to visit in December 2015 shortly after Dushanbe banned the group, designated it as a terrorist organization, and accused it of planning a coup. By 2019, Tajik media sentiment significantly improved as the bilateral relationship with Iran thawed, with both sides calling for closer ties.
Implications
These trends clearly show that Central Asian perception of Iran’s full membership in the SCO varies based on three factors — tensions between Iran and any major powers, landlocked Central Asia’s growing reliance on Iran for connectivity, and the state of these countries’ bilateral relations with Iran.
Given the nature of decision-making in the SCO, whereby the accession of new members requires consensus among all member states, even the smallest member could play spoiler.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharanya Rajiv is the manager of operations and senior analyst at Hillhouse Consulting Group. Her research focuses on geopolitical competition and energy politics in Eurasia. Previously, she was a senior program coordinator at the New Delhi center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she conducted research on India’s strategic interests in Eurasia. Sharanya is fluent in Hindi and Tamil and speaks intermediate Russian.
ABOUT HILLHOUSE
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