China is moving closer to completing what has been described as the world’s most challenging railway project, with the line in southwestern Yunnan province expected to be fully operational before 2030.

The recent meeting between the foreign ministers of Iran and Türkiye in Tehran was framed as a turning point in bilateral transport cooperation. Statements about prioritizing the connection of railway lines at the border sounded decisive and forward looking. Yet, beneath the confident tone, the initiative exposes a deeper and more familiar dilemma that accompanies almost every grand infrastructure project in today’s Eurasia: ambition is abundant, but financing and political resolve are not.

Armenian and Turkish officials met on Friday at the Akyaka–Akhurik border crossing, and later in the Armenian city of Gyumri, to discuss implementation of the agreements reached by the special representatives in the Armenia–Türkiye normalization process, News.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

Azerbaijan plans to complete the construction of the Horadiz-Aghband railway and highway by next year, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Shahin Mustafayev, said on Monday. 

On August 22, the Turkish city of Iğdır witnessed an event that might, at first glance, seem purely technical: the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kars–Iğdır–Aralık–Dilucu railway. Yet this is not merely a railway. It is a geopolitical project that, if completed, could fundamentally reshape the South Caucasus, strengthen the Middle Corridor, and change the fate of Nakhchivan, a region long trapped by isolation.

By Tural Heybatov

Iran and Russia are discussing plans to build a new railway linking Parsabad, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, to Bandar Abbas, Iran’s largest port on the Persian Gulf.

A roadmap for the implementation of an agreement on a joint railway project between China, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan was signed.