Almost a decade after Iran, India and Afghanistan agreed to develop a transit route connecting Afghanistan to Iran’s newly developing Chabahar port, the project is finally set to take off. The Afghans recently announced that the draft of the memorandum of understanding for road transit of commodities had been finalized and ready to be endorsed by all countries, perhaps as early as next month.
This development provides fresh impetus to Iran and India's bilateral relationship, which had lost considerable steam since 2005. Among other factors, economic constraints resulted from the sanctions imposed on Iran and India’s own policy realignment after its rapprochement with the United States.