Russia and Iran signed a transit roadmap for this year late last month for maximizing trade along the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC). The most important part concerns their plans for making progress on the Rasht-Astara railway between Iran and Azerbaijan and holding a high-level trilateral meeting between their countries sometime later this year. The project’s delay has impeded the NSTC’s most direct route and redirected lots of transit across the Caspian or along its eastern banks.
That’s not to say that the other two routes are being neglected, however, since they too were discussed during the meeting between the associated Russian and Iranian ministers who signed that roadmap. Plans are underway to organize a Caspian transport consortium among the region’s five countries and a comprehensive maritime transport roadmap between Russia and Iran. The Iranian minister also spoke about how Russia and Pakistan can employ the NSTC’s eastern branch for expanding bilateral trade.
For as promising as their transit roadmap and related future plans are, they’ll remain incomplete pending the normalization of Azerbaijani-Iranian relations and the NSTC’s partner countries deciding whether they’ll risk Trump’s wrath by violating his reinstated “maximum pressure” policy against Iran. The first represents a technical obstacle since it stands in the way of direct Russian-Iranian rail connectivity while the second is a political-economic one since it could lead to secondary sanctions.
Both remain very serious uncertainties since the former is driven by mutual suspicions of the other’s intentions per their long-running up-and-down security dilemma while the second figures into their respective relations with Trump’s America at this crucial moment in the global systemic transition. The NSTC will remain viable even if the Rasht-Astara railway is once again delayed but will cease viability if partner countries decide against utilizing it out of fear of the US’ reaction if they dared to do so.
While the solution to the Rasht-Astara railway issue remains bilateral, the one to the US’ secondary sanctions threats will involve America, particularly convincing Trump that it’s in his interest to either turn a blind eye to trade along the NSTC or issue sanctions waivers for it. This was elaborated on more in detail in mid-January here, but the gist is that the NSTC enables India to serve as a partial counterweight to China in Central Asia, which the US might be more receptive to given its ongoing talks with Russia.
It was motivated to initiate this dialogue in spite of near-universal condemnation from its nominal allies due to the desire to shape the conditions by which Russia might limit its cooperation with China, specifically in the resource sector and then possibly in the military-technical one with time. To be clear, a “Reverse Nixon” in the sense of “splitting” Russia and China is out of the question, but what’s being pursued is meant to erode some of China’s competitive advantages in its rivalry with the US.
In pursuit of this, allowing at least limited (ex: mostly Indian) trade along the NSTC as part of the incentives for Russia agreeing to whatever deal the US proposes on Ukraine could be a pragmatic means to this end, especially if it’s paired with the resumption of US-Iranian talks on the nuclear issue. This arrangement could create the circumstances by which Trump could ease his “maximum pressure” policy without “losing face” all while motivating Russia and Iran to reach deals with the US.
Readers can learn more about the nascent Russian-US “New Détente” in the three preceding hyperlinked analyses, but the most pertinent takeaway is that the US’ motivations predispose it to at least seriously considering a more flexible sanctions enforcement policy in furtherance of its grander goals. These are to leverage America’s existing strategic partnership with India and envisaged one with Russia for eroding some of China’s competitive advantages vis-a-vis the US via mutually beneficial deals with those two.
How all of this relates to the newly signed Russian-Iranian transit roadmap is that the possibility therefore exists that the US might reconsider applying its “maximum pressure” policy towards the NSTC. This scenario would likely be contingent on progress being made in reaching deals with Russia, Iran, and even India (the latter in regard to tariffs), but it would advance all four of their interests and thus retain the NSTC’s viability, albeit reconceptualizing it as a means for balancing Chinese influence in Central Asia.
