\n<\/p>\n
Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Pakistan has opened six overland transit routes for goods destined for Iran, formalising a road corridor through its territory as thousands of containers remain stranded at Karachi port because of the United States blockade of Iranian ports and ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n The Ministry of Commerce issued the Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026 on April 25, bringing it into immediate effect. The order allows goods originating from third countries to be transported through Pakistan and delivered to Iran by road.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The announcement coincided with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi\u2019s visit to Islamabad for talks with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Asim Munir, the latest in a series of diplomatic engagements as Pakistan seeks to mediate an end to the two-month war between Washington and Tehran.<\/p>\n Federal Minister for Commerce Jam Kamal Khan described the initiative as \u201ca significant step toward promoting regional trade and enhancing Pakistan\u2019s role as a key trade corridor\u201d.<\/p>\n Iran has not publicly commented on the move, and Al Jazeera\u2019s query to the Iranian embassy in Islamabad went unanswered.<\/p>\n The notification does not extend to Indian-origin goods. A separate Commerce Ministry order issued in May 2025, following the India-Pakistan aerial war that month, bans the transit of goods from India through Pakistan by any mode and remains in force.<\/p>\n The six designated routes link Pakistan\u2019s main ports, Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar, with two Iranian border crossings, Gabd and Taftan, passing through Balochistan via Turbat, Panjgur, Khuzdar, Quetta and Dalbandin.<\/p>\n The shortest route, the Gwadar-Gabd corridor, reduces travel time to the Iranian border to between two and three hours, compared with the 16 to 18 hours it takes from Karachi \u2013 Pakistan\u2019s biggest port \u2013 to the Iranian border. The Gwadar-Gabd route could cut transport costs by 45 to 55 percent compared with costs from Karachi port, according to officials.<\/p>\n But for Iran, firms sending their goods to the country, and transporters, all routes into Iranian territory today are viable options, with the principal maritime passage they have traditionally used \u2013 the Strait of Hormuz \u2013 blockaded by the US Navy.<\/p>\n The current US-Iran war began on February 28, when US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n In the weeks that followed, Iran restricted commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and gas passes during peacetime, disrupting one of the most critical arteries of global trade.<\/p>\n Pakistan brokered a ceasefire on April 8 and hosted the first round of direct US-Iran talks on April 11, in Islamabad. The negotiations lasted nearly a day but ended without a deal. Two days later, Washington imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, throttling Tehran\u2019s maritime access.<\/p>\n A second round of talks has since stalled. US President Donald Trump cancelled a planned visit to Islamabad by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner last weekend.<\/p>\n Iran has ruled out direct negotiations with Washington while the blockade remains in place, though Araghchi told Pakistani officials that Tehran would continue engaging with Islamabad\u2019s mediation efforts \u201cuntil a result is achieved\u201d.<\/p>\n The transit order appears to be a direct economic response to that impasse.<\/p>\n More than 3,000 containers destined for Iran have been stuck at Karachi port for several days, with vessels unable to collect the cargo. War-risk insurance premiums have surged from about 0.12 percent of a vessel\u2019s value before the conflict to roughly 5 percent, making shipping to the region too expensive for many operators.<\/p>\n The corridor also signals a shift away from Afghanistan, whose relations with Pakistan have deteriorated sharply.<\/p>\n The two sides engaged in clashes in October 2025 and again in February and March this year, with skirmishes continuing along the northwestern and southwestern borders.<\/p>\n The Torkham and Chaman crossings have ceased to function as reliable commercial routes since tensions escalated, limiting Pakistan\u2019s overland access to Central Asian markets.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a paradigmatic shift. Pakistan\u2019s relations with the Afghan Taliban, the de facto rulers in Kabul, have no reset switch,\u201d Iftikhar Firdous, cofounder of The Khorasan Diary, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cKabul has been diversifying away from Pakistan towards Iran and Central Asia, but this move flips the equation. Pakistan can now bypass Afghanistan entirely for westbound trade. The impact on Kabul\u2019s transit relevance and revenue is strategic, not immediate \u2013 but it is real.\u201d<\/p>\n Firdous said the implications extend beyond bilateral ties.<\/p>\n \u201cThis corridor also reduces Pakistan\u2019s reliance on longer maritime routes through the Gulf. Geopolitics, security, and infrastructure will ultimately determine which corridors dominate, but it places Pakistan as the main overland gateway for China-backed trade routes into West Asia and beyond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Minhas Majeed Marwat, a Peshawar-based academic and geopolitical analyst, urged caution. \u201cA cornered Afghanistan is a destabilised Afghanistan, and Pakistan knows better than most what that costs,\u201d she wrote on X on April 27.<\/p>\n \u201cThe opportunity here is real. So is the risk. Security on the northwestern and southwestern borders remains the variable that could unravel everything. Pakistan is positioned well. It is not yet positioned safely. Those are different things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013\u00a0Pakistan has opened six overland transit routes for goods destined for Iran, formalising a road corridor through its territory as thousands of containers remain stranded at Karachi port because of the United States blockade of Iranian ports and ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Ministry of Commerce issued the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Routes and regulations<\/h2>\n
Corridor shaped by conflict<\/h2>\n
Shifting regional dynamics<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"