Pakistan Activates Six Overland Corridors To Iran, Offering New Routes For Central Asian Freight

Pakistan has put into effect six overland corridors linking its three main seaports — Gwadar, Karachi and Port Qasim — to Iranian border crossings at Gabd and Taftan, a move that has already begun shifting cargo bound for Iran and Central Asia off ships and onto trucks. The measure followed an order issued April 25 by Pakistan’s commerce ministry permitting third-country goods to transit Pakistan en route to Iran, and comes amid disruption to maritime trade after air and missile strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel and a subsequent U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Port officials say thousands of containers intended for Iranian harbors had been waiting at Pakistani docks; Gwadar, which handled only about eight thousand three hundred containers over all of 2025, processed roughly eleven thousand in a matter of weeks this April — roughly one and one‑third times its prior annual throughput.

The land links route cargo through Balochistan towns such as Turbat, Panjgur, Khuzdar, Quetta and Dalbandin before crossing into Iran. The framework for such road traffic dates back to a 2008 agreement, but Islamabad and Tehran moved to activate the plan after Iran’s foreign minister visited Pakistan April 24‑26 and held talks with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir. Officials in both capitals framed the shift as a response to the strain on shipping lanes; vessels that would have called at Chabahar and Bandar Abbas have instead been delayed at ports outside the Hormuz choke point.

For Pakistani ports, the corridors offer an immediate operational lifeline. Karachi’s chronic congestion should ease as some Iran-bound boxes are trucked out of the harbor, while Gwadar — long touted but underused — is seeing a sudden upswing in activity. A senior analyst at a Karachi maritime think tank said the new traffic could alter bargaining dynamics between Islamabad and Tehran, making Pakistan a more central transit partner for Iranian commerce. But he cautioned that the change also increases Islamabad’s leverage over a trading partner whose economy has been hit hard by the recent strikes and blockade.

The wider significance reaches into Central Asia. The five republics and nearby states have long jockeyed for reliable southern access to seaports, weighing routes through China, Russia, the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Historically, many Central Asian exporters favored Iranian ports for their more consistent transit rules and better rail links. By contrast, access through Pakistan has been handicapped by security risks across Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, uneven infrastructure and unstable trade regulations. Bilateral tensions and Pakistan’s military operations into Afghanistan earlier this year further reduced confidence in the western land passages, prompting some capitals — Kyrgyzstan among them — to explore alternate corridors via the Karakoram and China.

The newly activated Pakistan‑to‑Iran roads change the calculus by allowing cargo unloaded in Pakistani harbors to be transshipped overland into Iran and then onward into Central Asia using Iran’s road and rail network. Yet the extent to which Central Asian shippers will divert to these corridors hinges on two practical tests: whether Pakistan can raise the efficiency and oversight of its ports and ensure secure movement of trucks across long desert stretches, and how intact Iran’s overland infrastructure remains after recent strikes. A Central Asian trade official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said governments are watching repair work on Iranian rail links and the safety record of convoys before committing large volumes.

If port operations, security and Iranian logistics stabilize, the corridors could become a meaningful alternative that helps Islamabad, relieves pressure at Karachi, and supplies Tehran with an urgent trade artery. But uncertainty remains. Until road safety, customs procedures and rail repairs prove reliable over several months, many exporters in the region will likely treat the new routes as a contingency rather than a full replacement for existing channels. Observers say the coming weeks of port performance and overland security will determine whether this initiative is a temporary fix or the start of a broader regional shift in how landlocked Asia reaches the sea.