The New Persian Corridor

When Putin realized that his three-day special military operation for annihilating Ukraine was extending into a years-long costly war, he noted the need to strengthen Russia’s economy. He had lost the export markets of European countries. The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization showed him the cold shoulder except for Belarussia’s Lukashenko. But then Onkel Luka refused to send his soldiers into the fight in Ukraine. China’s Xi Jinping refused the construction of the envisaged Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to China. Western sanctions isolate Russia from global markets. Women refuse to bear children and a million qualified workmen have left the country. Considering the arrival of western war equipment in Ukraine his propagandists warn of a defeat in the battlefield.

After all these frustrations, Putin sought help from the Iranian mullahs. Not only do they deliver Shahed suicide drones to him but also welcome the idea of building a commercial corridor through their country that will connect Russia to the neutral state of India and a number of nations on the Persian Corridor to Moscow.

As early as June 2022 a test railway train run from Russia’s Caspian Sea to Bandar-e Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. There the merchandise was loaded into a ship and reached Bumbai in India. Encouraged by the success, on September 9 the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia decided to build the Rasht-Astara railway line to fill the gap between Azerbaijan and the Iran network. From December 2022 to January 2023 the Volga-Don Canal was widened, so that bigger ships can now sail from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. And finally on January 19 this year was signed the Ashgabat Agreement in which Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, India, and the United Arab Emirates agree to finance a 600-kilometer railway from Chabahar on the Indian Ocean to join the Iranian railway network in east Iran.

The New Persian Corridor connection is cheaper and faster than the route through the Suez Canal. It leaves the hated European Union offside.

India sees the project as a cutthroat competition to China’s New Silk Road or the Belt and Road Initiative that includes the ill-fated China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to the port of Gwadar.

Putin is gloating over the West that despite the sanctions Russia is not isolated. More important for him is the prospect of a profitable trade with friendly countries. He hopes that the new economic power center can outrival economic giants like the United States, the European Union, Japan, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Putin wants Russia to become one of the heavyweights in the coming multipolar world. Only if Russia has a strong economy can he finance his war for many more years. The only things that count are to win the war and to remain in power.

My prediction is the huge investments will ruin Russia’s already-rickety economy before the New Persian Corridor project will turn a profit.