Oriented on making people closer

In March 2020, a new East-West corridor will be launched, which will link Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The statement came from deputy minister of road and urban development, CEO of Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company Kheyrollah Khademi in an interview with the Iranian news Agency ISNA.

According to the official, the road corridor will start in Sarakhs on the Turkmen-Iranian border, head to Mashhad, and ultimately reach Tehran, where it will branch into two routes leading to Iraq and Turkey.

"One branch will run northwest to Tabriz, and the other will run west from Tehran to Hamedan," Khademi said, revealing the details of infrastructural support that will provide traffic along the new transport connection.

According to the information, the northwest line of the corridor from Tabriz will go to the Marand highway, and from there will get access to the Iranian-Turkish border crossing Bazargan.

The western branch, going to Hamedan, will connect with Sanandaj, the center of the province of Kurdistan. The construction of 105-km long four-lane freeway is underway linking to Bashmaq checkpoint on the border with Iraq. It is expected to be commissioned next year.

It should be noted that the Serakhs (Turkmenistan) - Sarakhs (Iran) crossing, has become an important logistics hub in the connectivity between Iran and the countries of Central Asia.

According to the Iranian Ministry of road and urban construction, from March to September this year, Iran exported more than 600,000 tons of goods by rail to the Central Asian region, which is 90% higher than in the same period of 2018.

Given that any transport corridor, usually works in both directions "back and forth", in the future, the proposed Iran East-West corridor with coordinated logistics can open additional markets for goods from all Central Asian countries. The experience of coordinated transport cooperation accumulated by Turkmenistan and Iran during the operation of the rail corridor stretching between the two countries and Kazakhstan may contribute to realizing this idea.

The starting segment of the Turkmenistan-Iran-Iraq-Turkey corridor, namely Sarakhs-Mashhad, can serve cargo flows simultaneously by two modes of transport – road and rail, taking into account the Tejen-Serakhs-Mashhad railway. Iran's Razavi Khorasan province imports Turkmen polyethylene, cotton yarn, shipping containers and commercial items through this line.