Ismail I tried spreading Shia Islam everywhere he went in the early 1500s, and was extremely ruthless in doing so. It doesn't seem to have been particularly successful outside modern-day Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, and Ismail's successors toned it back a lot. Shia's served to isolate Iran from its neighbors more than anything.
No Russian conquest of Central Asia
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Ismail I tried spreading Shia Islam everywhere he went in the early 1500s, and was extremely ruthless in doing so. It doesn't seem to have been particularly successful outside modern-day Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, and Ismail's successors toned it back a lot. Shia's served to isolate Iran from its neighbors more than anything.
Against whom? The single most decisive factor of any war are the combatants, so before we talk about Camelry, its probably much more useful to look at the larger geopolitical picture. Russia mainly dominated in Central Asia OTL because it was much larger than any of its enemies, and had essentially infinite ressources to throw at the problem. If the region is to remain uncolonized, that means that Russia must loose its material advantage enough that the conquest of CA is no longer practical.
This can be done in one of two ways:
1) By fragmenting or diverting Russian military power. This would have to happen in Europe and probably be part of some much larger events.
2) By vastly increasing the ressources of Russia's regional enemies. This means we need to create a political force that can unify the region into a state that can defeat Russia's military.
That’s fine but you did not provide any meaningful explanation how this could happen. I’m not denying your right to believe in whatever you want but also don’t see any reason to share your beliefs without a convincing scenario explaining how Persia of XVIII - mid-XIX can develop the modern, by the standards of times, metallurgy and other technologies needed for a quality jump.
By the early XVIII this was simply not true. The first successful attempt to create European-style army belongs to the early XIX, to be specific, 1826 when the Janissary were abolished.
How many wars against the Russians did they won between 1730 and 1854? The main Russian problem within that period was logistics of the Balkans and the Caucasus, not the Ottoman armies.
This is the coolest weapon I have ever heard ofThe camel artillery was widely used by the CA states including Persia. The main problem with these zamburaks was that their caliber was very small and so was effectiveness of their fire.
Transporting disassembled field artillery by the camels was a different story.
As alexmilman has already pointed out, the Ottoman army lagged further and further behind European armies during the 18th century and was badly outclassed by the 19th. You can look at their performance in the Napoleonic period against both of their contemporary adversaries.
In the Balkans the Ottomans consistently lost field battles to smaller Russian armies and only held out due to their excellent system of fortifications, poor Russian logistics, a disease-prone local environment, and the fact that Russia only committed a small part of its army to the front due to more "Napoleonic" considerations.
Against the French in Egypt it was even worse, every time the Ottomans landed an army they were badly beaten at little cost to the French. I'm talking about the actual Ottoman armies here, not just the hopelessly outdated Mamluks, who still fought in much the same matter as Nader Shah's armies or the Indian armies that the British cut through during the Plassey era.
The one thing you could say for the Ottoman military was that it was more advanced than that of Persia, which is how they more or less held off Nader with much smaller armies. Even that faded at the start of the 19th century, when Abbas Mirza's British-trained forces were able to march all the way to Erzurum in 1821.
They don't need to develop those, because they already had them. The issue was never technology for any of the gunpowder empires, it always came down to economies of scale and standardization. Iran largely used the same kinds of weapons that Europe did, albeit with a generally heavier focus on light cavalry tactics dictated by the terrain and differences in military culture. Most of the practical differences didn't appear until the mid 19th century, when the industrial revolution allowed Eurpean nations to mass produce weapons and technology on a scale impossible for unindustrialized economies.
But this process can be, and was, replicated by non-western powers. Japan is a famous example, but China, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt were all nations that managed to build for themselves militaries that fell into the same category of a modern fighting force. Even if these powers were then defeated by European armies, their militaries were still playing in the same league as the Westerners, and their defeat was generally more due to economic and political factors than due to "technology" (which is a weird term that most laypeople overestimate in importance).
The presence of the Janissaries does not preclude the Ottoman army from being a modern, European military. Ottoman forces fought in a very similar manner to Western ones, in regimented structures commandeered by an officer corps and using primarily blackpowder weapons.
One. That doesn't change the fact that the Ottomans were capable of significantly interferring with Russia's geopolitical interests, which is how I'd define a rival.
You can say the same thing about the Russians, but that still doesn't mean that the Russian Empire didn't have a modern European army.
Historically twelver shia did make it to the Levant and become the core of what would evolve into Alawaite and (maybe) Alevism. But the traditional means that Shiite Islam utilised to spread into Sunni regions (the establishment of shadow provinces and closed communities) doesn’t work in the Steppe except maybe in the cities that the Steppe Horde utilised. Which aren’t really relevant to the steppe power political structures.
I don’t think it really matters though, Islamic kinship works across religious lines for the purposes of opposing Russian expansion. Especially with the shared perso-turkic heritage. Though I personally question how well Iran would be able to tap into that. Maybe Nader Shah and his Afsharid could pull it off since they attempted to lean into diplomatic leverage of perso-turkic shared heritage but I don’t see any following Persian realm managing such a thing.
In theory Iran has the same Steppe heritage (or rather understanding of the Steppe) that both the Qing (with the Uighur/Turkestan) and Russia (Siberia and Central Asia otl) to tame the steppe in an early modern context but in practice I don’t think Persia does have the institutional knowledge for it.
The Kazakh Khanate could easily have been much stronger. A good PoD would be preventing the civil war between the sons of Ablai Khan.
How were the Russians able to conquer heavily mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan?
I have read that the Russian Empire had no effective control over the rugged Gorno-Badakhshan, modern eastern Tajikistan.
Shah Ismail I's successors did continue the policy albeit toned down as you said.
You say that Shia Islam helped to isolate Iran from its Sunni neighbors but one could also argue that it helped to distinguish Iran from its Sunni neighbors. It gave Iran its own identity. Remember the Safavids were the first native Iranian dynasty to unite Iran since the Sassanids. It could be argued that there would be no Iran without the Safavids.