Iran is making a quiet but strategic push to control key rail arteries linking Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. By reviving the Istanbul-Tehran-Islamabad (ITI) line, launching a new Afghan connection and advancing a new transit corridor with Russia, Tehran is hoping to use railways as leverage in an increasingly contested Eurasian transit market.

In the span of just one week in late October, Tehran finalized plans to restart the long-stalled ITI freight line by December, signed a new five-year pact with Turkey and Afghanistan to construct the Herat to Mazar-e-Sharif railway and moved to complete the final missing segment of the North-South Transport Corridor with Russia. Officials from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey have met repeatedly in recent weeks to coordinate construction schedules, upgrade existing tracks and discuss operational agreements, signaling a renewed push to turn long-discussed plans into concrete projects.

Reviving the ITI

At an 11-nation regional transport conference in Islamabad on Oct. 25, Iran’s minister of transport and urban development, Farzaneh Sadegh, met with Pakistan’s ministers of commerce, communications and railways — Jam Kamal Khan, Abdul Aleem Khan and Hanif Abbasi — to push forward plans to restart the freight train service.