The Ottoman Empire's military strategic goal was to cut off Russian access to the hydrocarbon resources around the Caspian Sea. Aligned with the Germans, the Ottoman Empire wanted to undermine the influence of the Entente in this region, but for a very different reason. The Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha, claimed that if the Russians could be beaten in the key cities of Persia, it could open the way to Azerbaijan, to Central Asia and to India. Enver Pasha envisioned an extended cooperation between these newly establishing nationalistic states, if they were to be removed from western influence. This was his pan-Turanian project. His political position was based on the assumption that none of the colonial powers possessed the resources to withstand the strains of world war and maintain their direct rule in their Asian colonies. Although nationalist movements throughout the colonial world led to political upheaval in nearly all colonies in Asia during World War I and the interwar period, the decolonisation on the scale of Enver's ambitions was never achieved. However, Enver Pasha continued with his ambition after the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious Entente Powers until his death on August 4, 1922.