Iran International
Iran said on Tuesday that enhancing strategic cooperation with the five Caspian Sea littoral states has become a top foreign-policy priority, citing the basin’s growing significance in trade, transit, tourism and energy.
Speaking at the opening of the first international governors’ conference of Caspian coastal provinces in the northern city of Rasht, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Caspian region now holds the same weight in Iranian strategic planning as the Persian Gulf.
Araghchi told delegates that Iran’s neighborhood is “the main pillar” of its diplomacy and that cooperation among Caspian states had expanded across political, economic and security fields.
He said the five littoral governments – Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – had already built regular platforms for coordination, including leaders’ summits, ministerial meetings and now, for the first time, a gathering of provincial governors.
In outlining Tehran’s priorities, Araghchi said the Caspian basin is central to Iran’s plans for transport corridors and energy cooperation.
“The Caspian Sea basin … in the field of energy and transit corridors has extraordinary importance for all Caspian countries,” he said.
Regional officials at the event echoed his remarks.
Gilan Governor Hadi Haghshenas told the conference that joint action was essential to protect the Caspian’s environment as water levels fall and coastal ecosystems come under strain.
“We can, with shared cooperation, minimize the impact of falling water levels and the environmental damage caused by shipping and offshore oil activity,” he said.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said the provinces bordering the Caspian handle key responsibilities in fisheries, energy and transit.
On the region’s commercial role, he said: “By developing joint projects among Caspian coastal provinces and creating avenues for reciprocal investment, we can expand this region’s potential in ways that benefit all its people.”
"The Caspian is a natural crossroads for North-South and East-West transit routes, and by strengthening port capacity, improving transport infrastructure and coordinating logistics, we can significantly increase the Caspian’s share of international trade and turn existing corridors into stable, reliable routes,” the diplomat added.
Caspian Sea’s growing role
Iran is placing new emphasis on the Caspian Sea as a strategic anchor for its north-south trade ambitions, viewing the basin as a vital link in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which connects Indian Ocean ports to Russia and Europe.
The northern provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Golestan handle most of Iran’s Caspian traffic and host its main ports at Anzali and Amirabad.
According to an analysis by Mostafa Mohammadi, a political-economy researcher at Mazandaran University, the Caspian has long been an underused asset for Tehran despite its economic and geopolitical potential.
He describes the area as “the strategic depth of the Islamic Republic,” saying Iran’s priorities rest on securing its northern frontier, limiting foreign military presence in the basin and strengthening ties with Russia, Turkey and the Central Asian republics.
Mohammadi said that Iran is the only littoral state that has yet to exploit its offshore Caspian energy reserves, while neighbors have developed theirs for decades.
He argues that Iran’s geography gives it unique logistical leverage between the Caspian and the Persian Gulf, making it a natural bridge for rail, road, air and maritime flows across Eurasia.
“Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan remain significantly dependent on Iran’s geography for global trade access,” he wrote.
Iran aims to use this position to increase INSTC cargo volumes, upgrade its northern ports, and attract investment in shipping, fisheries, tourism and coastal industries.
Officials say the governors’ conference this week in Rasht reflects a shift toward integrating provincial-level diplomacy into national foreign-policy planning.
Littoral states see gains as trade grows
Regional cargo data show strong growth across the Caspian basin.
Freight volumes on the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) – the Middle Corridor linking China and Europe – rose 63% to 4.1 million tons in the first 11 months of 2024, according to Caspian News. Container traffic increased 2.6-fold to 50,500 TEU over the same period.
Kazakhstan reported 2.3 million tons of cargo along the corridor in the first half of 2025, a 7% year-on-year rise, Eurasian Star said. Azerbaijan handled 6.17 million tons of sea freight in January-August 2025, up 9.3%, according to Caliber.az.
Infrastructure upgrades are also accelerating. The Port of Baku plans to expand capacity from 15 million to 25 million tons, while academic research identifies Caspian ports as “critical logistics nodes” linking maritime trade to inland transport networks across Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
For landlocked Central Asian states, the Caspian provides a route to global markets that reduces dependence on Russian transit.
For Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, it has become an increasingly important leg of east-west trade amid geopolitical realignments and Moscow-related sanctions on traditional routes.
Infrastructure and environment challenges
Despite rising volumes, structural weaknesses continue to constrain the region’s full potential.
A 2024 study by the he Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program cited limited multimodal integration, fragmented logistics operators and inconsistent customs procedures as major bottlenecks slowing cargo transfers between sea, rail and road.
Environmental risks are also mounting with Iranian officials warning that up to a quarter of the Caspian Sea's water levels may dry up within the next 20 years.
Azerbaijan’s environment ministry reported in August that the Caspian Sea’s water level had fallen 2.5 meters over three decades, with annual declines of up to 30 cm disrupting port operations and increasing shipping costs.
Officials at the Caspian governors’ conference urged coordinated action.
Gilan’s governor said during the event that joint monitoring could “minimize the consequences of falling water levels” and safeguard fisheries, while Gharibabadi said environmental protection was inseparable from energy, transport and port-development planning.
"I do think there are people inside of Tehran who say in their quiet moments, we're a fading regime," said Norman Roule, a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency for over 30 years who once oversaw its Iran desk.
"We're not so far off from the Soviet Union in our final days, our leadership is not going to crawl into the grave when the Supreme Leader dies with him, and we need to survive," he added. "How do we modulate these dials, and how do we play this?"
"It's not to say that the Islamic Republic is the Soviet Union or 2025 is 1989," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the hawkish Washington-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
"History doesn't repeat, it echoes, as they say, but I think it's important to remember that we grew up in an era where the Soviet Union looked invincible."
Dubowitz likened Tehran's change in tack on some social issues to the attempts by the Soviet Union's last premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, to implement partial reforms to save the Soviet system only to bring about its downfall.
A surprise Israeli military campaign in June killed hundreds of military personnel along with civilians, knocking out much of Iran's air defenses. The US joined the conflict by attacking three Iranian nuclear sites before clinching a ceasefire.
Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off-duty military officer.
In the intervening months, the standoff over Iran's disputed nuclear program has festered as Washington under President Donald Trump has stepped up sanctions and European powers triggered the resumption of UN sanctions.
As the moves have deepened economic pain, Iran's clerical rulers have eased enforcement of Islamic veiling laws, paused a draconian new hijab law and looked the other way as once-banned outdoor concerts proliferate.
But crackdowns on dissidents and political speech have sharply mounted since the conflict, according to rights groups.
"There's a bit of a Soviet Union of the late 1980s. Who believed in the great Soviet revolution in 1988?" Roule told the panel moderated by Iran International's Fardad Farahzad. "This government is facing rot. It's just inevitable rot."
'Regime change'
At the height of the conflict, the leaders of both Israel and the United States suggested a desire to topple Iran's ruling system but a ceasefire implemented by President Trump made the prospect more distant.
Israel, Dubowitz asserted, remains dedicated to uprooting its arch-enemy in the region.
"After many, many years, that bringing down the regime in Iran is now a central pillar of Israeli strategy. I think October 7 ... changed everything. I think this is 'we can no longer live with the Islamic Republic. We know that Khamenei is committed to our destruction.'"
Roule expressed doubt that any outside power could carry out transformational change in Iran.
"I'm not sure that any external country can change that entire edifice, but certainly an external country such as the United States can and should be providing whatever support that can be provided so that the Iranian people can change that structure from within to what they need to give themselves that better future," he said.
Tehran has accused Israel and the West of trying and failing to topple the system which it attributes to popular support and resistance against foreign aggression.
Authorities this month erected a billboard in Tehran's Revolution Square with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi shown imprisoned in the Statue of Liberty's crown - victims, according to state ideology, of US regime change misadventures.
"They didn't survive an attack by the United States or Israel," Roule said. "They survived a surgical strike by the United States on select nuclear facilities."
Dubowitz acknowledged the term regime change was deeply unpopular in Washington.
"I think in our system, we don't like the word regime change because of our experience with Iraq and Afghanistan, though no one's talking about 500,000 mechanized US troops invading Iran," Dubowitz added.
"What we're actually talking about is the Reagan strategy, right, which Ronald Reagan successfully implemented in the 1980s which is maximum support for anti regime dissidents while putting maximum pressure on the regime."
