TEHRAN, Iran — With a raft of nuclear talks penciled in for the UN General Assembly (Sept. 24-Oct. 2) and a Russian plan to pluck Syrian chemical weapons from state hands, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani doubtless had plenty to discuss with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit on Sept. 13-14.

But Rouhani’s two-day trip to the SCO Summit was also about meeting Central Asian’s top brass to make good on his campaign promise of pursuing a policy of “regionalism.”

With the United States pulling out of Afghanistan and an economically competent Iranian administration bent on diversifying Iran’s economy away from its sanctioned oil exports in office, Rouhani’s government is looking at its northern neighbors with a fresh pair of eyes.

Much of the new president’s regional agenda is about increasing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s economic and political power in the "Stans," its northerly neighbors that are culturally and linguistically connected to Iran, and are even known in some quarters as "Greater Khorasan," after Iran’s northeastern province.