Pakistan Railways Freight CEO Sufiyan Sarfaraz Dogar , announced , last week that the second Russian-Pakistani transport coach service will release on March 15, transiting across Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
According to reports, the line will help Russian exports of industrial and agricultural products to Pakistan and Pakistan’s exports of agrarian and textile goods to Russia.
This is the most recent breakthrough in their relationship and has been in the doing for a long time. These are three major restaurants.
Iran’s unique position
Next month’s ideas show that Russia and Pakistan are prioritizing Iran over , Afghanistan , as the unique travel state for expanding their diplomatic deal. That’s reasonable considering continued Pakistani-Taliban hostilities, but it also carries risks.
Trump has  , already revived , his first government’s “maximum pressure” legislation against Iran and is therefore expected to establish secondary restrictions against all companies that also deal with it without a cancellation.
Trump’s but serious about this that he , threatened to change or rescind , the exemption that his first leadership extended to India, which has invested heavily in Iran’s Chahabar Port, but he’ll consistently come down cruelly against Pakistan, too.
Therein lies the problem since Pakistan has proven in the past that it will comply with American sanctions against Iran, most infamously the one that’s obstructing their , over-decade-long pipeline plans.
So, it will likely do the same with the US ‘ latest sanctions crackdown and, therefore, abandon this route for trade with Russia.
Pakistani-Taliban tensions
By relying on Afghanistan as their transit state, Russian-Pakistani trade could be conducted more cost-effectively and economically, but that won’t be possible as long as Pakistani-Taliban tensions continue.
In a nutshell, those tensions boil , down , to the Taliban suspecting that , Pakistan’s de facto military junta , is , secretly allied with the US , against it.
Pakistan, in contrast, accuses the Taliban of supporting terrorist organizations like Pashtun and Baloch ( perhaps as a counterbalance to restoring the fractious balance of power ).
Although Russia is , better positioned than anyone else , to mediate between them, it hasn’t yet formally done so, nor might it ultimately succeed in resolving the security dilemma at the core of their disputes.
That’s regrettable because relying on Iran increases the likelihood that Pakistan will fall victim to US pressure to impose secondary sanctions.
The self-evident solution is to patch up their problems for the greater good of Eurasian connectivity, but that’s a lot easier said than done.
Will to expand
Laudably, the will exists on both sides to expand bilateral trade in spite of the described obstacles. Quite clearly, there is still a , faction/school of the Pakistani establishment , that is serious about diversifying their country’s economic dependence on China and testing the limits of its traditional political dependence on the US, each by means of Russia. This suggests that senior citizens are placing a little weight between the two.
No one should be mistaken about India ever developing relations with non-traditional partners like Pakistan at this historic stage of the , global systemic transition to multipolarity, despite the fact that everyone agrees that this needs to be done at India’s expense.
The combined effect of the above mentioned imperatives is that the parties are sincerely attempting to make good on their , economic , agreements , from last year in pursuit of their complementary interests.
The imminent launch of the first Russian-Pakistani freight train service through Iran, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan is a big deal, but the challenges Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy and persistent Pakistani-Taliban tensions could pose could limit bilateral trade.
The best-case scenario would therefore be for Pakistan to defy the US over Iran, address its issues with the Taliban, and rely instead on two trade routes to Russia, but that might be too much for its de facto military junta.
This , article , was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber , here.