US turns to Central Asia amid global turmoil

While the Iran war smolders, Saudi Arabia fights the Houthis and a new rift opens in US-Ukraine relations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived at Samarkand in Uzbekistan on Sunday, a nation far removed from the biggest US foreign policy challenges. 
The top US diplomat will meet leaders from the C5+1, a grouping that brings together the United States and the Muslim-majority post-Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.   
He has largely ceded control of the contentious Iran, Ukraine and Gaza situations to US President Donald Trump's special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. 
Rubio was instead leading a massive delegation of 200 business leaders to Uzbekistan, where he will take part in a ministerial meeting of five Central Asian countries today.
US officials have portrayed resource-rich Central Asia — the region between China, Russia and Iran — as worthy of more attention than it received from US President Donald Trump's predecessors.
Trump hosted C5 leaders at the White House last November, when Kazakhstan agreed to join the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements under which Muslim-majority countries have normalized or deepened relations with Israel. Separately, Trump met with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the United Nations General Assembly last September.
After his visit to Uzbekistan, Rubio will head to India, with stops in Mumbai and Jamnagar in Gujarat state. 
Both are industrial hubs and major international port cities.
It will be the secretary of state's second official visit to India this year, after a May trip to New Delhi and Kolkata, signifying Washington's push in the region.
"We're very close" to a trade deal with India, the second senior US official said of negotiations that have dragged on for months.
Regional politics aside, the trip fits an emerging pattern in which Rubio often visits regions not at the center of the news cycle, while leaving some more fraught foreign-policy portfolios to other Trump aides, including special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Vice President JD Vance.
For instance, Rubio has not visited Kyiv or Moscow since becoming secretary of state. He was not present for talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Florida earlier this month, when US officials pressed Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries. Vance, not Rubio, represented the US in Pakistan during peace talks with Iran in April.
Rubio's previous foreign trip, in early October, took him to Greece, Portugal and Iceland.
Trump administration officials have typically rejected any suggestion that cabinet-level officials should focus their travels on geopolitical capitals and hot spots.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, for instance, said on X last week that the idea only certain destinations were worthy of visits from secretaries of state "perfectly encapsulates the decadence and degeneracy of the contemporary US foreign policy establishment."
One Central Asian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said officials in the region are wondering to what extent the US will continue targeting Russian sanctions evasion. All C5 states, while drawing closer to the US, have deep historical ties with Moscow, and the region has facilitated Russian imports and exports that violate US and European Union sanctions, Western officials say.
In the past, the US has pushed regional states to clamp down on those illicit flows.
But Trump struck a deal with Moscow this month to import Russian diesel, a move to lower domestic fuel prices before the congressional midterm elections.