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New Railway to Link Iranian, Syrian Coasts

Port of Latakia, Asharq Al-Awsat
Port of Latakia, Asharq Al-Awsat
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New Railway to Link Iranian, Syrian Coasts

Port of Latakia, Asharq Al-Awsat
Port of Latakia, Asharq Al-Awsat

A report by the Syrian ministry of transport revealed a bid on connecting Iranian and Syrian coasts as well as the Iranian town of Shalamcheh to Iraq’s Basra by a railway system that stretches from the Port of Imam Khomeini to the Port of Latakia.

Iran’s national state-owned railway system announced in April a project linking the cities of Shalamcheh and Basra via a 32-kilometer railway project financed and implemented by the Iranians.

Iran seeks to bolster its presence in Syria through scoring many vital economic agreements which will help it in dodging US sanctions.

It recently obtained the right to manage Syria’s port of Latakia after signing an agreement with President Bashar al-Assad during his visit to Tehran last February. Iran will use the Syrian port as an alternative route for shipping.

All this coincides with accelerating the implementation of the railway project linking Iran to Syria through Iraq. While the terms of the Iranian agreement to manage the port of Latakia were unclear, Moscow was quick to take control of the port of Tartus through a 49-year lease.

More on Syria-Iran deals, state news agency IRNA said a memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries’ electricity ministers in Tehran covered the construction of power plants, transmission lines, cutting losses in Syria’s electricity network, and the possibility of connecting the two countries’ grids through Iraq.

Iran, which has estimated expenditures in Syria at $6 billion yearly since 2012, has won economic contracts in Syria in agriculture, oil, industry, livestock and ports.

Its exports to Syria increased after a tax exemption. Tehran also signed an agreement to develop phosphate mines in Syria and is looking to enter the telecommunications sector as a third mobile operator.

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Taiwan President Will Visit Allies in South Pacific as Rival China Seeks Inroads

FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
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Taiwan President Will Visit Allies in South Pacific as Rival China Seeks Inroads

FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te will visit the self-governing island’s allies in the South Pacific, where rival China has been seeking diplomatic inroads.
The Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Lai would travel from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau.
The trip comes against the background of Chinese loans, grants and security cooperation treaties with Pacific island nations that have aroused major concern in the US, New Zealand, Australia and others over Beijing's moves to assert military, political and economic control over the region.
Taiwan’s government has yet to confirm whether Lai will make a stop in Hawaii, although such visits are routine and unconfirmed Taiwanese media reports say he will stay for more than one day.
Under pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force if needed, Taiwan has just 12 formal diplomatic allies. However, it retains strong contacts with dozens of other nations, including the US, its main source of diplomatic and military support.
China has sought to whittle away traditional alliances in the South Pacific, signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands shortly after it broke ties with Taiwan and winning over Nauru just weeks after Lai's election in January. Since then, China has been pouring money into infrastructure projects in its South Pacific allies, as it has around the world, in exchange for political support.
China objects strongly to such US stopovers by Taiwan's leaders, as well as visits to the island by leading American politicians, terming them as violations of US commitments not to afford diplomatic status to Taiwan after Washington switched formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
With the number of its diplomatic partners declining under Chinese pressure, Taiwan has redoubled efforts to take part in international forums, even from the sidelines. It has also fought to retain what diplomatic status it holds, including refusing a demand from South Africa last month that it move its representative office in its former diplomatic ally out of the capital.