The process of Iran's involvement in the 'main promising routes' of Eurasian transit has accelerated sharply. At the same time, all the North-South transit projects lobbied for by Yerevan have failed completely, as they are unrealistic and unprofitable, especially for Iran.

Recently, Javad Khedayati, an official representative of the Iranian Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization (RMTO), in an interview with ISNA news agency reported that representatives of the Iranian leadership, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed an agreement on the creation of a transit corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea.

"Of course, this plan was already proposed eight years ago, but due to the fact that many countries were involved in this agreement, it has not yet been implemented and the parties have not reached a consensus," Hedayati said.

Javad Hedayati also stated that the parties have agreed to launch the pilot phase of the project within the next four months, namely by March 2022. Several cargoes will be sent from Iran via Azerbaijan and Black Sea ports in Georgia to Europe. The parties will study the obstacles that will arise in order to work out the mechanism of transit afterwards.

After eight years, Iran is finally 'ripe' to participate in an extremely promising transit route linking the Persian Gulf to Europe, both for its economy and for the states in the region. The relevance of this route has recently been "highlighted" by unexpected problems at the Suez Canal, through which so far the bulk of transit from the Persian Gulf to the Northwest goes. But it is not only this that has prompted Iran to include itself in the transit project through Azerbaijan and Georgia.

For a long time Armenia that occupied Azerbaijan's Garabagh had been imposing an "alternative" project of transit through its territory on Iran. And it does not even have a normal infrastructure for this on its territory. At the same time Iran itself deliberately hampered the construction of a very small railroad line Resht-Astara (to the border with Azerbaijan), providing a direct and short rail route from the Persian Gulf through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea. At the same time, the Iran-Armenia railway project was lobbied for, which was absolutely fantastic in terms of costs and basically unprofitable.

The defeat of Yerevan in the 44-day war and the de-occupation of Karabakh did not immediately lead Iran to withdraw its support for Armenia on transit issues. Proof of this was the aggravation on the Iranian-Azerbaijani border after Iran then explicitly opposed the Zangezur corridor by "rattling its guns".

However, the tripartite meeting in Sochi on November 26, 2021 showed that opening of Zangezur corridor is inevitable no matter how much Tehran dislikes it. Those countries that are becoming key to Eurasian transit - Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia - must cooperate with Iran if it does not want to fall by the wayside on prospective transit routes. This is why a 'pilot project' for transit from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea is being launched today. Iran seems to be very interested in it economically.

Georgia will definitely benefit from this project, which is becoming an increasingly important link in Eurasian transit, both along the East-West, South-North and South-West lines.

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