/ world today news/ Iran and Russia have signed a major agreement to complete the railway section, which should ensure the full functioning of the North-South transport corridor. The participation of the presidents of both countries testifies to the scale of the event. This railway section is of great importance for Russia from a geopolitical and economic point of view.
As early as next year, 2024, Russia and Iran may begin the construction of the last railway section of the North-South transport route. This was said by the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak after the signing of the relevant intergovernmental agreement.
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kilometer section of the Rasht-Astara railway line should connect Iran’s railway network with the Azerbaijani and Russian railway networks. This will allow direct freight rail communication from St. Petersburg (and the Baltic Sea coast) to the Gulf Coast and the Indian Ocean.
“This is a big event for the region, for the entire world transport infrastructure, for our countries,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who attended the ceremony via video link. Expanding the capacity of the North-South transport corridor is essential. EU sanctions against Russia effectively blocked the country’s exports to the West. Seaborne exports through Baltic ports also face problems. Therefore, direct access to the Indian Ocean (especially with a view to the reorientation of Russian foreign trade to the East) becomes of fundamental importance for Russia.
Officially, the corridor was launched 20 years ago, in May 2002. In fact, it is not fully operational until now. The thing is, the corridor has a narrow place. There is no direct rail connection between Russia and Iran. The cargo is transhipped onto ships and transported across the Caspian Sea to Iranian ports, from where the containers go south by rail.
Iran’s ports on the Caspian Sea are not connected to the country’s rail network, and the railway lines near the ports are single-track, unelectrified, and have steep gradients. This significantly limits the capacity of Iran’s transportation infrastructure, increases the cost of transportation, and increases the delivery time of goods.
The North-South Corridor competes with the traditional sea route around Europe, through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal, and then around the Arabian Peninsula. And it still loses this competition because the overloading of containers increases the travel time. And the cost of rail transport is always higher than sea shipping.
Regional dispute
After the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijan (in exchange for a promise to maintain a free transport corridor between Armenia and Karabakh) won the right to organize the Zangezur land transport corridor. It is the road between Azerbaijan proper and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an Azerbaijani exclave separated by the lands of the Syunik region of the Republic of Armenia. For Azerbaijan, the Zangezur Corridor is important both as a link between the two parts of the country and as a direct link with Turkey (which shares a common border with the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic).
By the way, Russia’s interest in the North-South corridor and at the same time allied relations with Armenia make Russia an ideal mediator in this tangle of contradictions. But Russia has partners and even rivals along this path.
On December 16, 2021, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev announced that they had reached an agreement on the construction of the Erash-Julfa-Ordubad-Megri-Horadiz railway from the Armenian border town of Erash through the entire territory of Nakhchivan. and then through Armenian territory to the Horadiz deployment in Azerbaijan. The route is naturally connected to the existing railway lines of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The creation of the Zangezur Corridor was not supposed to interfere with the extension of the Samur-Baku-Astara meridional railway route to the south. But this is from the Russian point of view. The Western patrons of Turkey and Azerbaijan tried to cut off Russia from Iran using this corridor.
Azerbaijan’s political rapprochement with Turkey and Israel is seen in Tehran as hostile to Iran (Israel has attacked targets in Iran and carried out sabotage operations). In response, Iran supports Armenia in its opposition to Azerbaijan.
In this context, talking about the possible extraterritoriality of the Zangezur Corridor and the granting of this extraterritoriality by Turkish troops actually means that Armenia will be cut off from Iran. Tehran has repeatedly stated that it will not allow such a development of events. In support of his claims, he concentrated a large group of his armed forces near the border.
Three routes around/through the Caspian Sea
The North-South corridor is currently operating on a limited scale. Goods are transported along three routes: trans-Caspian (through the ports of Astrakhan, Olya, Makhachkala by sea to the Iranian ones), eastern (rail communication through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with access to the railway network of Iran) and western (Astrakhan – Makhachkala – Samur) , then the territory of Azerbaijan to the Iranian border).
“RZD-Logistika”, providing a service for transporting container trains from Russia to India along the eastern branch of the North-South land corridor, using the transport infrastructure of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and India, guarantees the delivery of goods in 37 days. The western route usually involves only road transport within Iran, as Iran’s railway network is not connected to Azerbaijan’s railways.
The increase in freight traffic along the North-South Corridor in 2022 has forced Iran to modernize its rail network and logistics facilities. As a result, according to the Al Jazeera channel, the minimum delivery time for containers from Russia to India (to the port of Nhava Sheva on the Arabian Sea) in June 2022 is 25 days.
But the capacity of the corridor remains insufficient. Cargo turnover growth is hampered by the lack of capacity at the Caspian ports of Russia and Iran. Freight traffic on the route surrounding the Caspian Sea from the east is also weak due to insufficiently good roads and underdeveloped infrastructure.
“Lastith kilometer“
It is the construction of the railway line from the southernmost Azerbaijani station Astara to Rasht, the terminus of the Iranian railway running along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, that should radically solve the issue of increasing the throughput of the entire North-South Corridor.
Russia is providing a loan of 1.5 billion dollars for this construction. The Russian part of the loan will also be used for the electrification of the Garmsar-Ince-Burun line with a length of 495 kilometers. After the completion of these works, the throughput of the transport corridor will increase and reach 30 million tons of cargo per year. Delivery time for goods from Mumbai to St. Petersburg will be reduced to ten days, while the Suez Canal route takes 30-45 days.
Russia’s geopolitical task is to make Azerbaijan benefit from the increase in freight turnover along the North-South Corridor. This will not force Baku to abandon the joint creation of the Zangezur Corridor with Turkey, but it will lead Azerbaijan from the Western-imposed logic of “either-or” (with a choice of whom to ally with and against whom) to the logic of “and- and” and taking into account the interests of all its neighbors.
But most importantly, the North-South route will make it possible to increase Russian exports, despite external opposition. Exports will not be blocked by unfriendly European countries and will allow Russia to freely increase trade with countries in Asia and Africa. In particular, to carry out the delivery of Russian grain, which is still stumbling in the West by all kinds of obstacles, despite the so-called Grain deal.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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