During a formal ceremony which was held in the Aprin Railway Station near Tehran, the capital city of Iran, on 21 July 2024, the Iran-China container block train resumed its operation from Qom City, Iran, to Yiwu City, China, after this service was halted due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The President of Iranian Railways (RAI), the Deputy Ambassador of China in Tehran, the Chief of Mission of the Turkmenistan embassy in Tehran, Foreign Ministry and customs officials of Iran, managers from Iranian Railways and representatives from the press attended the ceremony.
Relaunching these container block train operations aims to increase trade between Iran and China, and will reduce the transport time of freight between the two countries.
Their resumption takes place after an agreement was signed in April 2024 in Beijing between the railways of China, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, where the four undertakings agreed on the relevant tariffs as well as the transit time for transporting the containers from Altynkol, on Kazakhstan’s border with China, up to Tehran.
In his inaugural speech, Dr Seyed Miad Salehi, Deputy Minister for Roads and Urban Development of Iran and President of Iranian Railways (RAI) said that relaunching the Iran-China trains on the southern route of the Silk Road Corridor had been on the Iranian and Chinese railway agenda for some time and that launching loaded round-trip block trains between Iran and China would consolidate rapid and safe trade from China to Europe. Dr Salehi also added that current events would be the source of large-scale trade development between Iran and China as well as facilitating the development of international transport between Europe and Asia.
Deputy Ambassador of China in Tehran, Lihua Fu, noted that Iranian and Chinese cooperation in the past years had achieved impressive results. She also stated that launching this train, beyond connecting China to Central and West Asia, would provide a channel for developing cooperation between China and Iran on a commercial, industrial and cultural level.
Her Excellency then expressed her hope of witnessing strengthened cooperation between the two countries in the near future as part of the “One Belt One Road” initiative.
Additionally, train operations from China to Iran also resumed from the city of Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province, in northwestern China, to the city of Jolfa in northwestern Iran on 11 July 2024, during a ceremony with the Iranian Ambassador in Beijing, the head of Xian Port, and other local officials present. The two trains will soon begin to transport containers along the Inche-Buroun rail border between Iran and Turkmenistan.
