How Trump’s Iran ‘own goal’ is hitting long-term US strategy to contain Chinese influence
An Indian-backed port long seen as a counterweight to Beijing is now caught in the crossfire of the US war against Iran
The Iranian port of Chabahar has received strong backing from India, which hoped it would gain both a trade corridor into Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypassed Pakistan and a strategic counterweight to the Chinese-operated Pakistani port of Gwadar.
Successive US administrations recognised Chabahar’s value in helping to counter that risk and quietly granted sanctions waivers that allowed the Gulf of Oman port to continue operating even as Washington turned up the heat on Iran.
At the same time, Trump’s renewed maximum-pressure campaign against Iran has left little room for strategic exceptions.
Fresh sanctions and recent US military strikes have brought Indian operations at Chabahar to a standstill and damaged key infrastructure.
The contradiction is becoming hard to ignore.
The result, analysts say, is a strategic own goal that is undermining one of the few projects designed to limit China’s growing influence.
The same pattern is visible in the US-backed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Trump has described this as “one of the greatest trade routes in all of history”, but the project has made little concrete progress – partly because of the wars the White House has started or supported.
According to Ken Moriyasu of the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington, the centre of gravity for great power competition is shifting from the maritime Indo-Pacific to the Eurasian heartland.
Moriyasu argued India could not plug into such networks because the Himalayas made that impractical. “Geography makes India, in effect, an island off the Eurasian continent,” he said.
But Chabahar had the potential to change that, Moriyasu said, adding that the project was also strategically important for countries such as Japan, which were looking for the shortest route into Central Asia that did not rely on Chinese infrastructure.
“For the landlocked countries of Central Asia themselves, Iran provides the shortest route to warm-water ports,” Moriyasu said.
But he warned that the conflict in Iran risked undermining that vision and it was already clear that policymakers in Central Asia were moving away from the Iran route as a gateway to the sea.
“They are tilting toward routes through Afghanistan and Pakistan or the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” Moriyasu said.
He said US sanctions on Iran – and especially military strikes affecting Chabahar – “can damage one of the few projects capable of connecting India to continental Eurasia”.
“Washington should consider the broader geopolitical consequences. Weakening the Iranian corridor while reinforcing India’s geographic isolation would leave China with fewer competing connectivity networks across Eurasia and strengthen Beijing’s continental position,” he argued.
Nilanthi Samaranayake, a security analyst focusing on the Indian Ocean, said the US appeared determined to pursue its campaign against Iran, regardless of the impact on projects that had previously aligned with broader American goals.
“The US will continue its operations until its objectives are met despite India’s Iran equities,” she said.
The irony, she added, was that Washington had long called on India to do more “burden-sharing” in the Indian Ocean but had unexpectedly stepped up its activities in the region over the past year.
Major incidents include US forces boarding a ship off Sri Lanka in November to seize alleged military-related cargo travelling from China to Iran, and the sinking of an Iranian frigate by a submarine earlier this year.
That willingness to prioritise immediate pressure on Tehran over long-held considerations about Chinese influence in the region highlights the deep difference in strategic priorities between Washington and its partners, according to some observers.
Neil Quilliam from the London-based think tank Chatham House said the Trump administration’s approach to Iran and maritime security in the Gulf would “inevitably affect a range of regional actors”, but the “larger point [is that] states act according to their own priorities”.
“India understands this as well as anyone. The episode is a reminder that even close partners do not always share identical interests or strategic timelines,” Quilliam said.
He added that a “temporary disruption may create advantages for Beijing at the margins, but it does not fundamentally reshape the regional balance”.
“If Chabahar remains vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, India is likely to respond by diversifying its connectivity and diplomatic engagement rather than narrowing its regional ambitions.”