Iran’s Caspian ports become new trade lifeline as US blockade squeezes the south

TEHRAN, Iran — With Iranian southern ports under a United States naval blockade, Tehran is searching for alternative channels to move its oil exports abroad and bring essential goods home. The Caspian Sea along Iran’s northern coast is emerging as the most prominent of those options, though experts caution that the route comes with serious logistical complications that could blunt its usefulness.

Diplomatic efforts to break the deadlock have stalled. Recent work at the United Nations to halt the conflict appears to have collapsed after US President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal — which included an offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — as unacceptable. With no breakthrough in sight in the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, the government in Tehran is restructuring both its export and import routes under conditions of continued military pressure.

Until now, the overwhelming bulk of Iran’s maritime commerce has run through its southern ports. A US naval embargo, combined with airstrikes on infrastructure, is now pushing that traffic northward to the Caspian and onto Iran’s land frontiers. Notably, there are currently no active military attacks on Iranian interests in the north, a contrast that has made the region comparatively attractive — and has sharply increased the strain on overland infrastructure that was never designed to handle such volumes.

The water itself is the biggest problem. The Caspian Sea, the world’s largest landlocked body of water, is shared by Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and shipping across it has been increasingly constrained by a sharp decline in water levels. In April, UN Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said Caspian levels had fallen by roughly 2 metres (6.6 feet) since the 1990s, and are projected to drop a further 8 to 21 metres by the end of the century.

Shahram Fadakar, director general of the Iranian Department of Environment’s Office for Coastal and Marine Ecosystem Protection, told local media last week that levels have been dropping by more than 20 centimetres annually over the past two to three years. He warned that the trend threatens trade among all Caspian states, not only Iran.

Iranian ports are already feeling the effect. Masoud Polmeh, secretary-general of the Shipping Association of Iran, said this month that northern ports once accommodated berthed vessels weighing up to 6,000 tonnes but can now handle only 4,000-tonne ships. He added that Iranian vessels reaching the Caspian through Russia’s Volga River have become stranded by low water, sometimes sitting motionless for days or weeks until crews are rescued. At least so far, Polmeh said, that fate has not befallen vessels in Iranian ports.

Land routes, by contrast, are gridlocked. Vali Kaleji, an independent writer and researcher on Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, said the shift in logistical operations has placed enormous pressure on Iran’s land borders. At the Norduz crossing with Armenia, as many as 1,800 trucks have queued for days at a time to enter Iran, while at other terminals waiting times run from 10 to 15 days. Kaleji cautioned that the congestion is not solely a product of diverted freight: limited terminal capacity, customs procedures, deteriorating road infrastructure and ongoing construction projects all play a role. Sanctions on Iranian airlines, which have pushed large numbers of passengers toward the Armenian and Turkish crossings, have made matters worse.

To the east, a rail connection carries Iranian cargo to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and China, but Iran’s rail freight links to the South Caucasus — severed during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988 to 1994 — remain closed. Kaleji said reviving the Soviet-era Julfa-Nakhchivan railway depends on progress in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, particularly the implementation of the US-backed TRIPP transit project. Because a large share of transit and trade on the western branch of the North-South Transport Corridor runs over that line, he said, the missing connection remains a principal obstacle to boosting volumes “particularly under conditions of intensified maritime blockade in the south.”

Iranian officials have not disclosed which commodities, or in what quantities, are actually moving north — including through the Caspian ports of Anzali, Amirabad and Nowshahr. The available indicators point mainly to imports of essentials such as food. Last month, Ports and Maritime Organization chief Mohammad Shakibi-Nasab said Iran’s total nominal port capacity stands at 300 million tonnes, of which only 30 million tonnes is connected to its northern facilities.

Shakibi-Nasab noted that the northern ports’ share of essential-goods transport has climbed from 18 percent before the US-Israeli war to 30 percent today, a threefold gap in scale between the two coasts: a single vessel sailing from the south could carry the equivalent cargo of about 20 ships plying the Caspian. Hadi Haghshenas, governor of the northern province of Gilan, said in early September that container arrivals at Caspian ports rose 50 percent year on year over the five Iranian calendar months ending on August 22.

Haghshenas also pointed to a geographical advantage: unlike the Port of Shahid Rajaei in the south, the northern ports sit closer to major cities in central Iran, including Tehran, Isfahan and Arak, potentially cutting the overland cost of delivering imports to end users. He said the China–Aktau–northern Iran corridor — rail from China across Kazakhstan to Aktau, then by ship to the Caspian ports and by road into Iran — could expand regional trade further, as the government works to complete its preparations.