BAGHDAD, IRAQ — The Iraqi Ministry of Transportation unveiled specifics of the anticipated railway connection project with the Islamic Republic of Iran this Sunday. The project, which spans a total of 36 km, is set to traverse four key stations.
According to the ministry’s Media Office in a statement to the Iraqi News Agency (INA), the railway will commence at the Shalamcheh border port, journeying through the Shatt al-Arab district. It will then cross a bridge running parallel to the Khalid bin al-Walid Bridge, culminating at the Al-Qaziza area, designated as the terminal station.
The ministry emphasized that this rail link is exclusively for passenger transportation. With an expected influx of approximately three million Iranian visitors to Iraq annually, the project’s primary objective is to facilitate travel, tourism, medical treatments, and general movement between the neighboring nations.
On Saturday, Iraq’s prime minister had inaugurated construction work on what is slated to become the first railway line connecting the country to neighboring Iran, a major political and economic partner.
The “Basra-Chalamja connection project” will link the major port city of Basra in southern Iraq to Iran’s vast railway network through the Chalamja border crossing, a transport ministry official told AFP.
It is estimated that the project will take “between 18 and 24 months”.
The goal is to be able to transport “travelers from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Central Asian countries” to Shiite holy cities, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a speech.
He noted that the project had been under discussion for years before an agreement was reached in 2021.
During Saturday’s ceremony, Sudani laid a symbolic foundation stone alongside Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber.
Sudani thanked Tehran for planned demining operations at the border to clear the way for the train line and for a railway bridge over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before spilling into the Gulf.
Iraq and Iran fought an eight-year war in the 1980s after Saddam Hussein invaded his neighbor in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
Mokhber hailed the “strategic” project that he said would be completed “over the next two years”, Iranian state media reported him as saying.
Half of the 32 kilometers (20 miles) of rail track planned will be on the Iran side of the border, its official IRNA news agency said.
War-ravaged and beset by rampant corruption, oil-rich Iraq suffers from dilapidated infrastructure, including outdated highways and railways.
Sudani’s government has been working on forging a growing number of regional partnerships.
In May, Baghdad unveiled a US$17 billion project known as the “Route of Development” for a road and railway stretching 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Iraq’s northern border with Turkey to the Gulf in the south.