Middle East & Africa | From the Baltic to the Caspian and onwards

Russia and Iran are upgrading their transport links

The much-sanctioned pair are jointly seeking ways to avoid isolation

Iranian flags flutter during an inauguration ceremony for new equipment and infrastructure on February 25, 2019 at the Shahid Beheshti Port in the southeastern Iranian coastal city of Chabahar, on the Gulf of Oman. - With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the country's far southeast to maintain the flow of goods. The port in Chabahar, only about 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the Pakistan border and located on the Indian Ocean, is Iran's largest outside the Gulf. It is also the only Iranian port with exemptions from unilateral economic sanctions reimposed by the United States in 2018. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)

May 4th 2023

Ever since a French diplomat and developer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, sliced the Suez canal through Egypt in 1869, linking east and west, many Middle Eastern countries have tried to follow suit. Israel has recently broached cutting a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, or a rail link from its port at Haifa via Jordan and on to the Gulf. A former Iraqi transport minister tirelessly promotes a scheme to carve a canal from Iraq’s southern port of Basra all the way to Turkey. The most serious venture, though, is a Russo-Iranian one to link the Caspian sea to the Indian Ocean.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “A rail-and-sea passage to India”