Tehran Times reports that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has approved an agreement with Russia on building the Rasht-Astara railway, a move the paper says should speed up a project seen as key to completing the North-South transport corridor.
Tehran Times reported that Hooshang Bazvand, Iran’s deputy minister of roads and urban development, told the Tasnim news agency that the Rasht-Astara railway agreement needed approval from either parliament or the Supreme National Security Council. According to him, Russia had initially, under its own domestic rules, expected approval from the Iranian parliament, but following further talks the Supreme National Security Council took on that role last week.
Bazvand said the council’s approval would allow work to proceed at a faster pace. The newspaper wrote that the final 37-kilometre stretch of land along the route was formally handed over to the Russian contractor last Wednesday. With that, the entire 162-kilometre line is now in the contractor’s hands for geodetic surveys, engineering studies and site assessments.
Significance for the North-South corridor
The outlet stressed that the Rasht-Astara line is considered the last missing link in the North-South international transport corridor, a large-scale multimodal transport system intended to connect Russia and other northern Eurasian states to southern markets via Iranian territory.
According to Tehran Times, bringing the line into service would strengthen regional ties, ease cargo shipments, cut transport costs and boost trade turnover between Iran and Russia as well as other countries along the corridor. Bazvand described the project as part of broader international cooperation aimed at developing transport networks in Iran and the wider region.
