Russia and Iran are upgrading their transport links

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. After decades of feasibility studies, a joint fear of isolation by Western powers is driving Russia and Iran to build a sanctions-proof corridor. Since the West tightened sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, the ostracised pair have opened a roundabout rail-link via Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Russia is upgrading its own ports with Iranian investment. An Iranian shipping company on the Caspian is boosting Iran’s fleet of freighters. Russia is helping build a 164km railway through Iran to its border with Azerbaijan on the Caspian shore. Once this is complete it will provide a sanctions-defying rail link that runs from the Baltic down to Bandar Abbas on Iran’s Persian Gulf.