Is the US Overlooking Turkmenistan in Its Iran Strategy? |
Crossroads Asia | Security | Central Asia
Is the US Overlooking Turkmenistan in Its Iran Strategy?
Securing access agreements for Turkmen facilities would be of clear utility to Washington, but it is unclear whether Ashgabat would be willing to take the risk.
As the U.S. heads into a proposed ceasefire with Iran, which many have already characterized less as an ending than as a rebuilding period ahead of the next phase of the war, there is growing speculation that Washington will use that time to look for any additional regional advantages it can acquire against Tehran. In particular, searching for additional positions that could offer closer access to key targets in the north of the country, while also helping bypass much of the air defense infrastructure Iran has concentrated in the south.
As a result, one often overlooked theater has once again come into sharper focus in recent weeks as a potential candidate to meet Washington’s needs: Turkmenistan. Long one of the most closed and politically insulated states in the world, Turkmenistan now sits at the edge of the widening conflict. It is the only Central Asian country that borders Iran, sharing a 1,126-kilometer frontier that runs across sparsely populated desert and mountainous terrain.
For decades, Turkmenistan has sought to insulate itself from regional turbulence through a policy of “permanent neutrality,” formally recognized by the United Nations in 1995. That neutrality has allowed it to avoid entanglement in conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine. But this isolation has its limits. Since the outbreak of hostilities, Ashgabat has quietly opened multiple border crossings to facilitate the evacuation of 200 foreign nationals, including citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and South Korea.
So far, Turkmenistan has managed to avoid any direct involvement in the conflict and, unlike some of Iran’s other neighbors, also hasn’t come under direct attack from Iran. Tehran did threaten to target Turkmenistan’s TurkmenAlem satellite infrastructure that carries the BBC’s Persian service into Iran. To avoid any conflict with its southern neighbor though, Turkmen authorities ultimately caved to Tehran’s demands to halt the broadcasts, signalling both the sensitivity of the relationship and the limits of their room for maneuver. These tensions may suggest to some that there might be a potential opening for Washington to deepen its engagement with Ashgabat, or even potentially explore whether Turkmenistan could work alongside it against Iran in some constrained capacity.
Speculations of this sort have been particularly prevalent since January 2026, following visits to the country by the U.S. Special Envoy for South and Central Asia Sergio Gor and U.S. Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll. At present, Turkmenistan’s constitution prohibits foreign bases, and Ashgabat has consistently resisted any formal security alignment, but precedent exists for more limited military cooperation between the two.
During the early 2000s, following the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan did form agreements with Washington, permitting a limited number of American aircraft carrying non-lethal cargo to transit its airspace and refuel at Ashgabat. As part of this agreement, a small number of U.S. personnel were also permitted to operate on Turkmen territory in support roles. The facilities in Turkmenistan were nowhere near the size of the U.S. facilities at Qarshi in Uzbekistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan, but still a significant engagement for a country as insular as Turkmenistan. With Turkmenistan once again on the brink of another U.S. conflict, could we see a renewal of these sorts of arrangements today? Turkmenistan does have a number of very attractive positions to offer the U.S., with airbases like Ashgabat-North (Ak-Depe), Turkmenbashi International Airport, and the redeveloped Balkanabat airbase all potentially useful facilities for U.S. refueling access and the discreet transit of non-lethal cargo. It could also use Turkmen territory as a logistics node for humanitarian or contingency support missions.
Securing access agreements for Turkmen facilities would be of clear utility to Washington. Balkanabat Airbase, for example, sits roughly 700 kilometers closer to Tehran than Al Udeid, Qatar.
As things stand however, any such proposal would be highly likely be rejected by Ashgabat for a wide range of political and strategic reasons. Even if any U.S. role inside Turkmenistan were kept as narrowly limited as it was in the 2000s, it would still carry meaningful military risk for Ashgabat, not least because Tehran’s threshold for viewing such a move as escalatory, and responding accordingly, would likely be low. While there was very little danger of the Afghan Taliban being able to strike key cities in Turkmenistan during the 2000s, the scenario today with regard to Iran would be very different. Ashgabat could find itself angering a neighbor with far greater conventional strike reach, better intelligence coverage, and a much stronger capacity to impose costs upon Ashgabat quickly. All of this is made even worse by the fact that the majority of Turkmenistan’s key critical infrastructure and population centers sit within 100km of the Iranian border. Even if Ashgabat were to try to pursue such a deal with the U.S. and attempt to characterize Washington’s activity as humanitarian, logistical, or temporary in nature, Tehran would still likely interpret such measures as provocative and respond via drone strikes and cyberattacks.
These vulnerabilities to Iranian drone and missile strikes have also grown even larger over time, as an increasing share of defense spending has been diverted away from the state’s more conventional requirements, such as air defense and sustaining a national air force, and toward rapid-response capabilities, parade-ready formations, and internally focused security forces.
What we found through extensive research and war-gaming for the Turkmenistan chapter of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs’ Armed Forces of Central Asia study was that Turkmenistan retains only a very limited stock of interceptor missiles, alongside major sustainment weaknesses across its broader force structure. In practical terms, that makes it extremely difficult for the state to endure any prolonged or high-intensity contingency against an adversary such as Iran.
Being well aware of how dangerous it would be for Turkmenistan to align itself with the United States in a conflict of this kind, Washington is likely conscious that it does not currently hold the level of political capital required for such a favor.
Having also already seen its military presence pushed out of Uzbekistan in 2005 and Kyrgyzstan in 2014, Washington additionally has good reason to assume that other Central Asian states are highly improbable basing options. Uzbekistan further restricted the prospect of foreign military facilities on its territory in the latest version of its constitution, while both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan now sit in markedly closer strategic alignment with Moscow. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, remains geographically even further removed from the Iranian theater than the United States’ existing positions in the Middle East, limiting its utility for any such role. While Turkmenistan’s usefulness is not lost on Washington, it remains highly unlikely, at least at this stage, that Turkmenistan would be willing to assume the risks that would come with breaking from its neutral posture. For now, it appears far more likely that Tehran and Ashgabat will remain cautious and ambivalent partners, with both governments remaining far more focused on managing domestic pressures than creating a new and unnecessary crisis along their long shared border.
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As the U.S. heads into a proposed ceasefire with Iran, which many have already characterized less as an ending than as a rebuilding period ahead of the next phase of the war, there is growing speculation that Washington will use that time to look for any additional regional advantages it can acquire against Tehran. In particular, searching for additional positions that could offer closer access to key targets in the north of the country, while also helping bypass much of the air defense infrastructure Iran has concentrated in the south.
As a result, one often overlooked theater has once again come into sharper focus in recent weeks as a potential candidate to meet Washington’s needs: Turkmenistan. Long one of the most closed and politically insulated states in the world, Turkmenistan now sits at the edge of the widening conflict. It is the only Central Asian country that borders Iran, sharing a 1,126-kilometer frontier that runs across sparsely populated desert and mountainous terrain.
For decades, Turkmenistan has sought to insulate itself from regional turbulence through a policy of “permanent neutrality,” formally recognized by the United Nations in 1995. That neutrality has allowed it to avoid entanglement in conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine. But this isolation has its limits. Since the outbreak of hostilities, Ashgabat has quietly opened multiple border crossings to facilitate the evacuation of 200 foreign nationals, including citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and South Korea.
So far, Turkmenistan has managed to avoid any direct involvement in the conflict and, unlike some of Iran’s other neighbors, also hasn’t come under direct attack from Iran. Tehran did threaten to target Turkmenistan’s TurkmenAlem satellite infrastructure that carries the BBC’s Persian service into Iran. To avoid any conflict with its southern neighbor though, Turkmen authorities ultimately caved to Tehran’s demands to halt the broadcasts, signalling both the sensitivity of the relationship and the limits of their room for maneuver. These tensions may suggest to some that there might be a potential opening for Washington to deepen its engagement with Ashgabat, or even potentially explore whether Turkmenistan could work alongside it against Iran in some constrained capacity.
Speculations of this sort have been particularly prevalent since January 2026, following visits to the country by the U.S. Special Envoy for South and Central Asia Sergio Gor and U.S. Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll. At present, Turkmenistan’s constitution prohibits foreign bases, and Ashgabat has consistently resisted any formal security alignment, but precedent exists for more limited military cooperation between the two.
During the early 2000s, following the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan did form agreements with Washington, permitting a limited number of American aircraft carrying non-lethal cargo to transit its airspace and refuel at Ashgabat. As part of this agreement, a small number of U.S. personnel were also permitted to operate on Turkmen territory in support roles. The facilities in Turkmenistan were nowhere near the size of the U.S. facilities at Qarshi in Uzbekistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan, but still a significant engagement for a country as insular as Turkmenistan. With Turkmenistan once again on the brink of another U.S. conflict, could we see a renewal of these sorts of arrangements today? Turkmenistan does have a number of very attractive positions to offer the U.S., with airbases like Ashgabat-North (Ak-Depe), Turkmenbashi International Airport, and the redeveloped Balkanabat airbase all potentially useful facilities for U.S. refueling access and the discreet transit of non-lethal cargo. It could also use Turkmen territory as a logistics node for humanitarian or contingency support missions.
Securing access agreements for Turkmen facilities would be of clear utility to Washington. Balkanabat Airbase, for example, sits roughly 700 kilometers closer to Tehran than Al Udeid, Qatar.
As things stand however, any such proposal would be highly likely be rejected by Ashgabat for a wide range of political and strategic reasons. Even if any U.S. role inside Turkmenistan were kept as narrowly limited as it was in the 2000s, it would still carry meaningful military risk for Ashgabat, not least because Tehran’s threshold for viewing such a move as escalatory, and responding accordingly, would likely be low. While there was very little danger of the Afghan Taliban being able to strike key cities in Turkmenistan during the 2000s, the scenario today with regard to Iran would be very different. Ashgabat could find itself angering a neighbor with far greater conventional strike reach, better intelligence coverage, and a much stronger capacity to impose costs upon Ashgabat quickly. All of this is made even worse by the fact that the majority of Turkmenistan’s key critical infrastructure and population centers sit within 100km of the Iranian border. Even if Ashgabat were to try to pursue such a deal with the U.S. and attempt to characterize Washington’s activity as humanitarian, logistical, or temporary in nature, Tehran would still likely interpret such measures as provocative and respond via drone strikes and cyberattacks.
These vulnerabilities to Iranian drone and missile strikes have also grown even larger over time, as an increasing share of defense spending has been diverted away from the state’s more conventional requirements, such as air defense and sustaining a national air force, and toward rapid-response capabilities, parade-ready formations, and internally focused security forces.
What we found through extensive research and war-gaming for the Turkmenistan chapter of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs’ Armed Forces of Central Asia study was that Turkmenistan retains only a very limited stock of interceptor missiles, alongside major sustainment weaknesses across its broader force structure. In practical terms, that makes it extremely difficult for the state to endure any prolonged or high-intensity contingency against an adversary such as Iran.
Being well aware of how dangerous it would be for Turkmenistan to align itself with the United States in a conflict of this kind, Washington is likely conscious that it does not currently hold the level of political capital required for such a favor.
Having also already seen its military presence pushed out of Uzbekistan in 2005 and Kyrgyzstan in 2014, Washington additionally has good reason to assume that other Central Asian states are highly improbable basing options. Uzbekistan further restricted the prospect of foreign military facilities on its territory in the latest version of its constitution, while both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan now sit in markedly closer strategic alignment with Moscow. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, remains geographically even further removed from the Iranian theater than the United States’ existing positions in the Middle East, limiting its utility for any such role. While Turkmenistan’s usefulness is not lost on Washington, it remains highly unlikely, at least at this stage, that Turkmenistan would be willing to assume the risks that would come with breaking from its neutral posture. For now, it appears far more likely that Tehran and Ashgabat will remain cautious and ambivalent partners, with both governments remaining far more focused on managing domestic pressures than creating a new and unnecessary crisis along their long shared border.
Michael Hilliard is the Director of Defense and Security Analysis at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, and the project lead on The Armed Forces of Central Asia.
Iran-Turkmenistan relations
U.S.-Turkmenistan defense cooperation
U.S.-Turkmenistan relations