After a 10-year hiatus, the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI) railway project, linking Turkey with Pakistan via Iran, resumed operations on 21 December.
At a ceremony in Islamabad, Pakistani Railways Minister Azam Khan Swati said that the ITI railway was “a long-standing dream of the countries of the region, which came true again.”
The ceremony was attended by officials from the three founders of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), as well as officials from Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that “regional business cohesion is in dire need of important projects, such as the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul railway.”
The ITI railway will make the 6,540 km journey from Islamabad to Istanbul in 10 days, 11 less than the time it takes to make the trip by sea. The railway will pass through Quetta into Taftan at the Iranian border and on to Tehran and Tabriz, before ending up in Istanbul through Ankara.
Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey originally launched this railway project in 2009, but except for a few test runs, it was never fully operational.
However, the three nations now say they plan to follow up the initial freight trains with passenger services, with the aim of developing the project’s connectivity with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a trillion-dollar mega infrastructure project that seeks to facilitate trade between Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Specifically, the ITI is set to connect with China’s northwestern autonomous Xinjiang region, which is mainly populated by Turkic Uighur Muslims.
The ITI railway project will also allow Iran to circumvent US economic sanctions as, despite Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, it would be virtually impossible to prevent the country from trading with its neighbors in their local currency.
Most recently, Tehran also reached an agreement with Azerbaijan and Georgia to establish a transit route connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea.
This transit route could also be linked with the ITI to further enhance regional connectivity, as both Islamabad and Ankara have a close relationship with Baku.