Iran reroutes trade to northern ports and land corridors, but cannot fully replace maritime routes

Iran is accelerating a shift of trade away from its southern maritime gateways toward northern ports, rail links and overland corridors as a US-led maritime blockade disrupts business through the country's Gulf terminals. The move can preserve flows of food, medicines and industrial inputs, but analysts and officials say it cannot fully replace shipping that carries the bulk of Iran’s trade and energy exports.

Economy Minister Ali Madanizade, speaking during talks in Moscow, urged Tehran to activate its northern border crossings and reroute a significant share of imports and exports away from the south. The logic is straightforward: Iran borders seven countries, has access to the Caspian Sea and multiple land connections with Russia, Central Asia, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan and the Caucasus.

Official capacity figures cited by Iranian authorities at the end of 2025 put northern port capacity at more than 30 million tonnes a year, of which less than one third was in use. That suggests substantially larger volumes of grain, foodstuffs and other cargo could be moved via the Caspian and adjacent corridors. Freight traffic between Iran and Turkey that relies partly on rail across Lake Van moved about 477,000 tonnes in 2024.

“Iran has more room to manoeuvre than its dependence on southern ports suggests,” said Alireza Salavati, a political-economy analyst based in London.

Capacity, cost and bottlenecks

Volume remains the biggest constraint. Jafar Gaderi, a member of the parliament’s economic committee, said 83 percent of Iran’s imports—about 210 million tonnes by his figures—traditionally arrived through southern maritime routes. “Whenever we are under a maritime blockade, we face problems,” he said, stressing doubts about how much the eastern, western and northern corridors can absorb.

Cost differences are stark. Majidreza Hariri, president of the Iran–China Chamber of Commerce, estimates that shipping a container from China to Iran via southern ports costs roughly $3,000, while the same load transported overland can reach about $12,000. With roughly two million containers entering through southern ports each year, Hariri calculates a possible long-term trade cost increase of about $18 billion if traffic shifts to land routes.

Replacing maritime capacity is also a logistical challenge: to substitute a single 50,000‑ton vessel would require about 2,000 truck trips if each truck carried 25 tonnes, consuming vehicles that would then be unavailable for domestic distribution and raising fuel, insurance, storage and customs costs. Low‑value goods are especially vulnerable because transport expenses become a larger share of final price.

Energy exports are the hardest to reroute. A very large crude tanker can carry roughly 1.5–2 million barrels; moving such volumes by road would demand thousands of tankers. Rail is more efficient but still falls short of maritime shipping on cost, speed and capacity. “This plan is realistic as a resilience strategy, but not as a replacement strategy,” said Umud Shokri, an energy strategist and visiting fellow at George Mason University.

Infrastructure projects like the Goreh–Jask pipeline were designed to reduce reliance on the Strait of Hormuz by redirecting crude toward the Gulf of Oman, giving the port of Jask strategic importance. Yet officials and analysts say usable capacity has lagged behind initial ambitions. The Rasht–Astara rail link remains incomplete and is a serious bottleneck; Astara’s freight terminal is designed for 3.5–4 million tonnes a year but handled only about 345,000 tonnes in the first five months of 2026.

In short, northern ports and overland corridors can lower vulnerability, spread risk and buy time by keeping essential trade moving and deepening ties with Russia, Central Asia, Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq. But higher costs, limited throughput and political risks mean the blockade is likely to leave long‑term structural effects on Iran’s economy: land routes can mitigate some damage, but they cannot reproduce the scale and economics of the Gulf ports and maritime energy exports upon which Iran has long depended.

Photo: press material from the event