Turkmenistan has allowed international cargo transportation between Uzbekistan and Iran through its territory to be performed by foreign drivers in an escorted convoy starting this month, the Uzbek Transport Ministry said Monday.
Opening up new shipping routes has become an essential task for Central Asian nations that traditionally relied on Russia for much of their cargo transit and have had logistics disrupted by Western sanctions against Moscow.
Since the COVID-19 restrictions imposed in 2020, Uzbek cargo containers bound for Europe and Southeast Asia via Iran's seaports were delivered to the Turkmen border to be shipped to the Iranian border only by Turkmen drivers as Turkmenistan sought to let in as few foreigners as possible.
