May 4, 2026

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Iran Looks to the Region to Blunt the U.S. Blockade

AP Photo/Asghar Besharati

Iran’s leaders see underutilized land transportation routes as one component of Tehran’s overall strategy to outlast the U.S. blockade that went into effect April 13.Utilizing land and other alternative trade routes will presumably help Iran counter what U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has termed “Operation Economic Fury” — which includes the U.S. naval quarantine combined with additional U.S. economic sanctions on countries doing business with Iran. The stated intent of the U.S. economic pressure is to compel Iran’s remaining leaders to agree to a war-ending agreement that, among many provisions, fully opens the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic and places strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program. For their part, Iranian leaders are trying to circumvent, mitigate, or otherwise thwart the U.S. economic stranglehold long enough to allow the deteriorating global economic conditions to compel Trump to end the war on terms favorable to Tehran.

Beyond demonstrating an ability to withstand a severe economic downturn, Tehran’s strategy appears to center, at least in part, on trying to develop or better use land routes, to or through its neighboring countries, to replace blocked seaborne trade. Economists estimate that Iran depends on seaborne trade to move 90 percent of its total imports and exports. Of that trade, the overwhelming majority is blocked because it is mainly shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, and some minor Iranian ports on the Arabian Sea, and only a small amount is moved across the Caspian Sea. Experts also note that Iran needs to find ways not only to move exports to its customers, but also to import the intermediate goods it needs to run its industries and supply the population. Iranian and regional officials note that, although Iran’s agricultural sector is large and mostly self-sufficient, the country requires imports of refined fuel and food grains.

Iran’s ability to replace seaborne with land-based trade, at least to the extent Iran needs to counter U.S. pressure, might determine whether Iran replicates the success other countries throughout history have had in defeating or frustrating great power quarantines. Most of the leaders of governments on Iran’s borders opposed the U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury, either out of concerns of regional instability and chaos, the humanitarian effect on Iran’s population, refugee flows, or concerns about the intent of a successor regime. Yet leaders of some of Iran’s neighboring states would view a collapse of Iran’s regime as benefitting regional stability and enhancing their strategic partnerships with regional players aligned with the U.S. However, none of Iran’s neighbors, no matter their stance on Iran’s government, has joined the U.S. blockade by sealing their land borders or imposing new restrictions on land-based commerce with Iran.

The leaders of two of Iran’s largest neighbors, Pakistan and Türkiye, worked to try to dissuade Trump from launching Operation Epic Fury. Pakistan has since emerged as the lead mediator trying to end the war, including hosting the highest-level U.S.-Iran talks since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But Pakistan also has close relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally and Iranian adversary that Tehran has attacked as part of its response to the U.S. bombing campaign. In September 2025, following the Israeli strike on a Hamas facility in Doha, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a strategic pact, representing a key step in the Kingdom’s efforts to diversify its defense and security relations rather than relying completely on the United States. As such, Pakistan has sought to balance its attempts to de-escalate the war with its commitment to protecting Saudi interests.

Perhaps to add weight to its mediation efforts, Pakistan opened six overland transit routes last week for goods destined for Iran. The announcement expands the implementation of a 2008 Pakistan-Iran trade agreement that Iran, at the time, hailed as a significant step toward developing alternative routes to export and import needed goods. The Pakistani decision also helped Islamabad by freeing up 3,000 cargo containers building up at Karachi port, unable to sail into Iran by sea. The April 25 Pakistani Ministry of Commerce order implementing the decision provides for goods originating from third countries to be transported through Pakistan and delivered to Iran by road. Trump officials did not react publicly to the Pakistani decision, perhaps reflecting a U.S. assessment that the contribution to Iran’s ability to outlast the blockade will be modest.

The opening of the additional border crossing also builds on Pakistan’s existing strategy — punctuated by the December inauguration of a freight rail service from Islamabad to Tehran — to open a direct trade route for Pakistan to Europe, via Türkiye. The rail route streamlines the delivery of goods through Iran, and onward to Türkiye, which previously required shipping Pakistani goods first by sea to Iranian ports, before being sent onward to Türkiye by road. That cumbersome routing prevented Pakistan from fully benefiting from trade with Europe. Another trans-Iran route is helping Pakistan increase its exports to Central Asian countries. On April 12, Pakistan completed its first export consignment to Tashkent, Uzbekistan via Iran, Pakistan Today reported, citing customs officials.

Another large neighbor, Türkiye, is a strategic competitor of Iran that has benefitted from Iran’s regional isolation and the economic and strategic pressure put on Tehran by Trump and his predecessors. Yet, Türkiye has incentives to help the regime survive the U.S. blockade and Operation Epic Fury. Türkiye receives 14 percent of its natural gas imports from Iran, placing pressure on Ankara to maintain its ties to Iran at a time of severe worldwide gas shipment disruptions and price elevation. Ankara also fears an Iranian political collapse would help Iran’s Kurds — about 10 percent of the population — carve out an autonomous zone within Iran and complete an arc of broader regional Kurdish empowerment no government in Ankara could tolerate. Turkish leaders were alarmed at reports from earlier in the war that Washington was considering arming Iranian Kurdish groups, particularly the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that is outlawed in Türkiye. Ankara’s fragile domestic peace process with the PKK, which began moving toward disarmament in 2025, would not likely survive a successful Kurdish insurrection inside Iran.

Among other considerations, Ankara is a strong supporter and patron of Azerbaijan, a secular, Turkic-speaking state that borders Iran, but has been at odds with Iran for decades. Even though Azerbaijan’s population is mostly Shia Muslim, as is Iran’s, Baku has been working with Israel and the U.S. for many years to undermine Iran’s ability to project power. Azerbaijan’s leaders, and many of its citizens, might welcome an Iranian political collapse as an opportunity for closer ties with Iran’s large Azeri ethnic population. Prior to the war, rather than help Iran diversify its trade routes, Türkiye and Azerbaijan instead cooperated with Trump officials to develop the so-called Zangezur Corridor through the South Caucasus. The route incurred Iranian opposition because it will connect Türkiye to Central Asia while bypassing Iranian territory altogether, reducing Iran’s land access to its own ally, Armenia. In August 2025, in the context of Trump’s personal involvement in formally settling the long-running war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, the U.S. acquired leasing rights to develop the Zangezur Corridor, renaming it the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).” During the war, Iran launched a few missiles into both Türkiye and Azerbaijan, apparently to deter them from assisting the U.S. war effort.

It is not clear, to date, whether Iran has sought to increase its overland trade to Armenia, Türkiye, or Azerbaijan as part of its blockade mitigation efforts. However, Iran’s Food Industry Associations Union head, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, confirmed last week that Tehran had activated the Caspian Sea route and northern land and rail routes as alternatives to the Strait, according to the Associated Press. The use of the route suggests that Azerbaijan, which shares the Caspian coast with Iran, is not seeking to disrupt Iran’s efforts to develop alternative routes. The land route to Armenia, still available to Iran now, might also become vital to Iran as the blockade continues to pressure Iran’s economy.

Among their other limitations, land routes cannot resolve the core question of maintaining existing volumes of crude oil deliveries to Iran’s main customer, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has been buying more than 1.5 million barrels of Iranian oil per day for the past few years. If exports to the PRC are not restored by the time the tankers of Iranian oil that are still afloat complete their deliveries to Chinese ports, Iran will likely have to reduce production and risk damaging its wells. There is no established overland or northern maritime infrastructure capable of exporting meaningful volumes of Iranian crude oil to the PRC or to other buyers. Press reports note that Iranian leaders are discussing trying to deliver oil to the PRC by rail, but doing so would be more expensive and in smaller volumes than by tanker — and therefore offer little mitigation of Iran’s core problem.