TEHRAN – A senior Iranian military commander has warned that the enemy’s objective is to remove Iran from trade corridors.

“Today, the enemy is making every effort and using every strategy to restrict corridors and monopolize their benefits and somehow leave us aside,” said Rear Admiral Shahram Irani, the commander of Iran’s Navy, in a ceremony to review a draft document on national marine development.

“I request that the issue of corridors and the country’s getting connected to the seas be highlighted in this document,” the top commander said.

“We always pay attention to the sea from the coast, but one should pay attention to the coast from the sea in order to get a better grasp of this rather unique potential and conditions surrounding it,” he said.

“In our documents, we have always focused on the North-South Corridor, but failed to pay attention to the East-West Corridor,” the admiral explained. He called for the document to become operational and be implemented.

Iran's special geographical location, being situated along the international corridors of North-South and East-West which connect West Asia to East, Asia and Europe, has provided a special transit place for the country. 

Iran's railway network in the west links with Turkey and to Europe; in the northwest to Azerbaijan; in the north to the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia; in the northeast to Turkmenistan and Central Asia, Russia and China; in the southeast to Pakistan and in the south to the Persian Gulf and the open waters of the world.

The potential income of Iran's rail transit from trade exchanges between East Asian countries and Europe through the East-West corridor is estimated at about $1.8 billion and through the North-South corridor at about $90 million a year.

This shows how important the East-West corridor is to Iran. Currently, Sarakhs-Bandar Abbas is the most active rail corridor in Iran, providing 80 percent of the country’s transit revenues.

Emerging economic powers such as China and India, which are the main parties pursuing the completion of corridors in the region, are trying to arrange multiple routes for their trade.

Even though none of the trade routes in the region can replace those through Iran, parallel routes can reduce the transit benefits of the country.

Therefore, Iran's delay in securing its share of transit in the region would benefit its competitors and seriously underline the country’s national interests.

Iran’s geographical location on the path of both the East-West and North-South corridors is definitely unmatched, which can also avail the passage of combined corridors, especially in view of the economic, security and time-saving advantages which the country has.

However, the precedence given to political observations by some parties has created problems, which calls for robust political parleys and expansion of political and economic relations to keep Iran in the centerpiece of the regional connectivity plans.

Any failure can deprive Iran of numerous benefits in this regard, although the exclusion the Islamic Republic from the regional connectivity map would incur grave costs for the other parties.

Iran has also said it will block an American corridor in the Caucasus.

Under a deal signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington on Friday, Armenia could grant exclusive rights to the U.S. to develop a corridor in its southern Syunik province, which borders Iran, to connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan.

Iran has for long opposed the idea, saying it would change the geopolitical order of the Southern Caucasus and would restrict Iran’s ability to use transport networks in the region.