While mutual warnings continue to be exchanged over the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian military officials threaten to detain vessels belonging to companies working with Tehran's frozen assets, somewhere further north, rails, bridges and terminals are still being built. It reflects a regional peculiarity: infrastructure here tends to be built in parallel with wars rather than after them, on the calculation that sooner or later the logic of transit will outlast the logic of conflict. The new reality that emerged after the Second Karabakh War quite clearly demonstrates the validity of this claim.

The question this article asks is what network of routes Iran will find itself facing once (and eventually all wars do reach their logical end) the current war is actually over, and what place within that network it will be able to preserve for itself.

Discussion of Iran in the context of connectivity too often slides into one of two extremes: either the image of a natural and indispensable Eurasian bridge, or the image of a toxic neighbor whose involvement in any route automatically makes that route problematic. Both approaches, it must be said, are equally unhelpful for practical analysis. A more productive question is different: at what point do individual routes stop contradicting one another and start functioning as links in a single network? And what role can Iran objectively occupy within that network, regardless of the rhetoric its official statements lean into?

Geography cannot be cancelled by diplomatic notes. Iran is the only country in the region with simultaneous access to the Caspian, the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, which is precisely why Tehran so persistently promotes the narrative of itself as the only BRICS country sitting at the intersection of three major Eurasian transport axes at once. But behind the rhetoric lies a perfectly measurable fact: without Iranian territory, the southern branch of the INSTC does not physically exist, and the Caspian region simply has no alternative for overland access to the Indian Ocean.

This does not make Iran a benevolent partner, all things considered — but it does make it an irremovable factor of geometry. And building regional policy around ambitions is one thing; soberly factoring geography into any scenario analysis is quite another — even while the regime itself is currently at war and in a state of internal turbulence.

Three Routes That Tehran and Baku See Differently

Over the past year, three parallel logics have effectively taken shape on the region's map, and none of them cancels out the others.

The first is the Zangezur corridor, renamed after the joint declaration signed by President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on August 8, 2025, into the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity." This is 42 kilometers running along the Iranian border, placed under US management for 99 years. For Baku and Ankara, it is a direct transit corridor to Turkey and Europe. For Tehran, this project has become the single greatest irritant of the past year and a half, since for the first time in the region's recent history a route has emerged that physically bypasses both Iran and Russia — with a US presence running along the Iranian border, no less.

The second example is the development of the Aras transport route, including the construction of new road and rail bridges across Iranian territory connecting mainland Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. This project reflects not so much Baku's reaction to political uncertainty around the Zangezur route as a consistent Azerbaijani strategy of diversifying its transport links and strengthening the resilience of its national logistics system. By developing several directions at once, Azerbaijan reduces its dependence on any single route and reinforces its position as a key Eurasian transit hub. In this context, cooperation with Iran functions not as a shift in geopolitical priorities, but as a necessary element of a long-term policy that guarantees reliable transport access to Nakhchivan regardless of the pace at which the TRIPP project advances.

The third logic is the INSTC itself, into which Iran invests the greatest share of its political capital. The key point here is the 162-kilometer gap between Rasht and Astara on the Iranian side. By late July 2026, Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, according to industry sources, had moved into the implementation phase of the project after resolving land-allocation issues — yet construction itself is still expected to take roughly another 48 months, and the signing of the executive contract, originally scheduled for April 1, 2026, has been postponed and sent back for review precisely because of regional tensions. In reality, then, the horizon in view is closer to the turn of the next decade than to 2028.

An important nuance that often gets lost in talk of "corridor competition": within this configuration, Azerbaijan is not choosing one logic over another. It provides the northern anchor point for two systems at once — the outlet to Georgian ports and the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars line for the western branch of the INSTC, and, simultaneously, a potential overland corridor to Turkey via the TRIPP project. If both routes materialize, Baku will find itself at the intersection of two transcontinental systems at the same time — a fundamentally different situation from a zero-sum game.

Tehran's Lens: What Is Reality, and What Is a Claim on the Future?

Farzad R. Bonesh, a senior researcher and analyst of Middle East geopolitics and Eurasian geoeconomics, lays out Tehran's vision along several strategic vectors at once: a permanent corridor coordination council, "green corridors," knowledge exchange, and Iran's growing role following the entry into force of the free trade agreement with the EAEU. It is worth separating these claims into those already confirmed by practice and those that remain, for now, targets rather than achievements.

Part of the argument does rest on solid fact. The full-format free trade agreement between Iran and the EAEU, eliminating tariffs on nearly 90% of the tariff nomenclature, entered into force on May 15, 2025, following ratification by all member parliaments. This is already an operating trade regime, one that objectively strengthens Iran's position within the Eurasian architecture regardless of how the current conflict unfolds.

Another part of the argument belongs to the planning horizon, and here a clarification is useful. Asked about Iran's most ambitious infrastructure projects, Ramezani Bonesh named the completion of the Chabahar–Zahedan railway as a key factor in strengthening the country's transit standing, stating that the line will simultaneously close both the East–West and North–South corridors. This is a 750-kilometer route that has been under construction since 2021, with its completion date repeatedly pushed back - from 2024 to March 2026, then to the end of 2026, with the expected commissioning now shifted to mid-2027. In terms of its function, the railway primarily strengthens the North–South axis, linking a port on the Indian Ocean coast with inland Iran and, further on, with Central Asia via Sarakhs. Its contribution specifically to the East–West axis still reflects, to a greater degree, the target Tehran is aiming for than a result already achieved.

This distinction does not mean that Iran's position is built on empty promises — the agreement with the EAEU clearly shows that part of these ambitions has already been realized. Rather, it means that Iranian projects need more time to mature than the rhetoric of officials might suggest. It is precisely this gap between what is declared and what is built that is worth keeping in focus when assessing Iran's role "after the war."

War Is Not a Pause

A caveat is necessary here, without which any discussion of a "post-conflict Iran" risks sounding premature. The war, which began on February 28, had still not ended by late July 2026. It has gone through several cycles of ceasefires and their collapse, and the IRGC continues to threaten vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and periodically detains tankers. Building an analysis on the assumption of "once the war ends" is, of course, a legitimate analytical device in itself — but it needs to be stated explicitly as a scenario assumption, not treated as a backdrop that has already arrived.

At the same time, the very fact that construction of the Aras corridor, work on Rasht–Astara, and implementation of the EAEU agreement are all continuing within the active phase of the conflict is itself a significant observation. The logic of connectivity in the region does not wait for a political resolution - it continues to take shape, and it is precisely this network of routes forming right now that will define Iran's starting conditions in any post-conflict scenario, regardless of which political regime is in place in Tehran by then.

The transport corridors surrounding Iran no longer fit the familiar "either us or them" framework. The Zangezur corridor, or TRIPP, the Aras corridor, and the INSTC are not mutually exclusive projects but three parallel systems, each accounting for the Iranian factor in its own way: one by bypassing it, a second by using Iranian territory as a pragmatic alternative, and a third by making Iran a central link. For Azerbaijan, this does not lead to a sentimental conclusion about rapprochement with Tehran, but to a fairly sober calculation. Ultimately, the more independent routes converge through Baku and Nakhchivan, the lower the cost of any single political crisis — whether Iranian, Armenian, or otherwise. In this sense, the region's resilience is genuinely determined not by who wins the race between corridors, but by whether the network as a whole can withstand the next round of turbulence.