Syria started exporting livestock to Saudi Arabia through Iraq last month for the annual season of sacrifice during the Hajj pilgrimage, a step seen as vital to opening a new route for Syrian exports towards the Arab Gulf countries.
The move came after Iraq resumed its fuel oil shipments to the international market in April through a Syrian terminal on the Mediterranean after a two-year halt following regime change in Syria.
Earlier, Iraq announced that it had begun exporting oil via a 600-mile pipeline running from Kirkuk in northern Iraq to Turkey’s Mediterranean port terminal at Ceyhan after its oil exports through the Gulf plummeted due to the ongoing regional conflicts.
Simultaneously, Iraq opened another crossing on its northern border with Syria and Turkey in order to transit Turkish goods destined for Gulf markets through the country.
All these moves seem to signal new thinking in the Middle East after decades in which trade routes have been strategic targets for geostrategic rivalries and struggles.
What led to these developments was the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and another maritime chokepoint in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait, with perilous implications for the regional economy.
The closure of the two sea passages during the Israeli war on Gaza and the US-Israeli war on Iran has triggered large energy and supply chain disruptions, handing global business a bill of billions of dollars and resulting in soaring energy costs, severe fertiliser shortages, and heightened risks of global food shortages.
The conflicts, which are expected to continue with perilous implications for the world economy, have sent a warning over a likely coming contest over the Middle East corridors.
While shipping and energy flows through the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait resumed after an understanding between the Houthi group in Yemen and the United States, the Gulf remains under pressure, exposing the vulnerability of routes that rely on the Strait of Hormuz.
Many countries have been forced to find alternative routes for their shipping even as questions remain over whether these can continue amid intensifying global and regional competition.
Saudi Arabia has launched two new routes to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The first, the Red Sea Express, links the port of Jeddah and the King Fahd Industrial Port in Yanbu with Ain Sokhna in Egypt and Aqaba in Jordan.
The second route is between Jeddah and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa via Salalah in Oman and is designed to support import-export activity at regional and international ports.
The UAE has also launched a “green corridor” logistics route to bypass regional shipping disruptions and Strait of Hormuz bottlenecks.
The land-and-sea model allows diverted global cargo to dock at Omani ports like Sohar, Duqm, and Salalah and then move seamlessly via bonded trucks and streamlined customs into the newly opened corridor.
Qatar and Turkey have reportedly started discussing a gas pipeline linking the two countries through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. The pipeline would then be extended to Europe.
Regional conflicts and geopolitical shifts have forced a massive redesign of maritime and trade corridors in recent years, with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) fueling a major geopolitical and economic scramble in the Middle East.
The BRI, or “One Belt, One Road,” launched in 2013, includes a large set of development and investment projects aimed at connecting Asia and Europe through various forms of transport infrastructure.
The project, better known under the name of the “New Silk Roads” after routes taken by the Venetian traveller Marco Polo in the Middle Ages, reflects China’s ambitions to build hyper-connected and high-speed logistical and digital hubs.
With the power struggle over the global economy intensifying, the Chinese project, due for completion in 2049, has caught the attention of nations vying to secure vulnerable world waterways.
In September 2023, the US released a memorandum of understanding announcing the establishment of a new corridor aimed at connecting India and Europe through the Gulf.
The Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an aspirational rail-and-port corridor through Israel, Jordan, and the Gulf designed to link Europe to the Arabian Peninsula and India, aims to reduce vulnerability to maritime chokepoints.
In association with the IMEC, the UAE has proposed a contiguous railway network directly linking Abu Dhabi with the Israeli port of Haifa and passing through Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The so-called “Peace Railway” is meant as a transit corridor connecting the UAE to the Mediterranean and bypassing maritime chokepoints, thereby drastically reducing shipping times and fostering regional economic ties.
Israel is believed to be working on laying the foundations for this and other projects covertly, although Israel and Middle East watchers point to geopolitical complications.
This proposed transcontinental trade route serves primarily as a US strategic tool to counter China’s influence in the Middle East. The project also aims at advancing the “Abraham Accords”, the normalisation deals signed between Israel and some Arab countries in 2022.
Iraq has also unveiled plans to build a $17 billion “Development Road”, a massive railway and highway corridor designed to connect Asia and the Gulf to Europe through Turkey.
The project, which spans 1,200 km of infrastructure and power lines, starts at the Grand Faw Port in the Gulf and ends at the port of Mersin in Turkey, where it will connect with the European continent.
Its construction aims at improving overall transportation capacity in both Iraq and Turkey and reducing logistics costs, thereby creating favourable conditions for economic development.
Kuwait is expected to finish the construction of its Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port this year. The project, launched in 2011, has been divided into three phases with expected total handling capacity of over eight million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units).
Kuwait wants the project to significantly strengthen its trade profile both regionally and globally by positioning it as a key logistics and trade hub in the region, possibly triggering tensions with Iraq.
Not surprisingly, Turkey has also come up with an ambitious railway project of its own. In collaboration with Syria and Jordan, Ankara is determined to bring back the Hejaz Railway, which ran from Istanbul to the Arabian Peninsula 100 years ago.
The reconstruction of the line focuses on key sections in Syria and Lebanon, with the aim of creating a north-south route that will bypass Israel.
Many of these ambitious projects could be aimed at providing an alternative to the Suez Canal by diversifying travel routes from Asia to Europe.
The canal, one of the best secured international waterways, connects the Mediterranean to Asia and East Africa through the Red Sea and handles roughly 12 per cent of global trade and up to 30 per cent of global container traffic.
While the ongoing geopolitical conflicts, particularly near the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait, pose a threat to the canal, the 193-km waterway remains the world,s most critical maritime artery.
Long before China launched its BRI followed by other initiatives, the Middle East, particularly Egypt, was at the centre of trade routes that were the communications highways of the world.
Given the locations of today’s proposed projects in the strategically sensitive Middle East region, many of them underscore a high level of geopolitical vulnerability.
They have opened a new front in the Middle East as a region that is not to be managed for its own sake but instead as a geopolitical structure in a larger regional and international contest.
In order for these projects to be load-bearing in terms of international trade, their stakeholders do not only need to ensure the security of the maritime chokepoints and the new routes, but they also need to boost regional peace and stability.
This is where the new corridors come into the equation, as they seek to reverse the current instability that has been wreaking havoc with the status quo established after World War I that made the region an international trade bridge.
The most effective part of this equation is that it is not so much about technical and economic coalitions and infrastructure as about integrating the economies of the region with international partners.
This means that the proposed corridors do not pressure countries to make a choice between different routes and passages, but they do bet on the idea that this choice will present itself naturally when the region no longer faces the geopolitical risks of states vying for power.
Thus far, the projects serve primarily as either diplomatic tools to deal with shifting political circumstances or temporary exits from the chokepoints created by the ongoing conflicts.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 June, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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