Tungsten is one of the most important metals in the world, as it is necessary for the production of missiles and fighter jets. Its a very hard metal with a very high melting point, which means it can penetrate tough targets like tanks. China produces about 80% of the world’s tungsten supply. With the Trump trade war with China, Beijing began restricting tungsten and other important mineral exports, making the benchmark price for the metal outside China to rise sixfold in the past year. The US wants to counter this. Since Trump entered office, the federal government has conditional or final approval to sixty critical mineral projects around the world. This project has been financed by $18.6 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees or other forms of funding. This is the biggest case of federal funding for mining minerals in US history.
America is in a predicament, since the war of choice with Iran (which the US and Israel started) has gotten it to waste away much of its missile stockpiles. Now, the Americans need more tungsten. But they don’t want to depend on China. This explains why the Trump administration just made a deal with Kazakhstan to mine for tungsten. This story underlines the geopolitical importance of Central Asia, where Kazakhstan lies with its Turkic neighbors. Kazakhstan can produce and process 25 of the 60 minerals that the US needs. “Kazakhstan is positioning itself as an important player in the global rare and rare earth metals market,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, the chief executive of the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund, which owns the state mining company that is partnering with a company called Kaz Resources which the Trump administration is contracting with to mine tungsten. Zhakupov’s company calculates that there is around $80 billion work of tungsten in Kazakhstan. As part of the deal, the US could get access to an estimated 12,000 metric tons of tungsten a year, which is around the amount the US imports every year.
As we read in the New York Times:
When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.
During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods.
Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.
A bizarre aspect of this story is that (as the New York Times reports): “At the center of the Kazakhstan deal is an Australia-born rabbi named Pini Althaus, who moved to the United States years ago and set his sights on critical minerals. Mr. Althaus is the executive chairman of Kaz Resources and the related company that will mine the Kazakh tungsten deposit, and he remains a shareholder in another critical minerals firm he founded that secured up to $1.6 billion in Commerce Department financing this month.”
In the summer of 2025, both the Export-Import Bank and the US International Development Finance Corporation (Howard Lutnik has a seat on the boards of both of these agencies) issued letters of interest to give Rabbi Althaus’s company financial backing for the Kazakh project. These loans could amount to as much as $1.6 billion. In September of 2025, at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, Howard Lutnick was working to secure the deal with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan. President Trump called in during the meeting, negotiated with Tokayev and settled the deal. According to the New York Times, “Chinese bidders were also looking to get access to the Kazakh tungsten site, which is one reason Mr. Althaus needed help from the U.S. government. The final signing took place on Nov. 6, during a high-profile summit in Washington, where Mr. Trump welcomed the five leaders of Central Asia and highlighted his interest in their critical minerals.” Rabbi Althaus really dominates in the deal. According to the Times, “Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Althaus’s firm now owns 70 percent of the venture, and the Kazakh state mining company will own 30 percent.”
The rise in the importance of Central Asia as a source of minerals and energy (oil and natural gas) spells the rise in the importance of Turkey as a vital trade route for NATO. Since the tungsten is going to be coming from Kazakhstan, to where will it transported to get to the United States? It could transport the tungsten through China, Russia or Iran, but these are enemy territories. That leaves the best option as Turkey, since it is a major member of NATO and is on a direct line from Central Asia, through the Caspian Sea, into Azerbaijan (a US ally), through Armenia, into Nakhchivan (which is part of Azerbaijan) and straight into Turkey, from where it could pass through Europe or into the Mediterranean.
This route is known as a the “Middle Corridor” and is one of the main reasons Turkey is so important for America’s global power. Why do you think Trump brokered the peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan and got the former to agree to allow NATO to have a corridor on the Armenia-Iran border? Its about establishing that Middle Corridor to use Turkey as a route through which to import goods from Central Asia and thus bypass the Russians and the Chinese. Remember, Turkey was leading Azerbaijan in that war against Armenia and crushed the Armenians. Thus, Trump’s deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan was a victory for Turkey which stands to benefit from such an accord. Why do you think the US is so obsessed with Iran? Do you think America cares about the Iranian people? This is about trade routes and entrenching America as the global empire. If the US can control Iran or at least pull Iran into its sphere of influence, the US would then control the Strait of Hormuz (through which 1/5th of the world’s oil flows), but would also hold onto the only direct route by land from West Asia into Central Asia. The US would also be able to get Iran to stop exporting military supplies (such as drones) into Russia through the Caspian Sea. Turkey’s rise in importance connects to its aspirations to control the Central Asian Turkic countries (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan) as one big Ankara-led bloc of power that would span from Anatolia, to Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Turkey is close to Iran with which it has security ties against their archenemy Israel (both Iran and Turkey are rivaling with Israel over Syria and Lebanon). Thus, what we have here is the second most armed country in NATO (Turkey) holding security ties with Iran. Turkey is thus NATO’s doorway to get close to Iran to use the Persian country has a direct land route into Central Asia. If Turkey can unite the Central Asian Turkic countries under Ankara as part of a pan-Turanian vision, it will be to the interests of the United States since this Turkic bloc of power could be used to block Russia and China from Central Asian resources, while at the same time the US and its European allies could tap into these very treasured resources. What the US is doing, by empowering Turkey in order to weaken Russia and China, is ushering in a neo-Ottoman empire. And while the US is Israel’s biggest ally, a bigger Turkish power is rising up against Israel, and the US will not be willing to give up on this neo-Ottoman leviathan due to its trade routs (into Iran and the Caspian Sea and its control over the Straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles). Which means, the monster of America’s own creation will be to the eventual demise of “our greatest ally” Israel.
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