Iran is planning an ambitious initiative to connect the Caspian Sea to central regions of the country and the Persian Gulf, via an artificial channel link Sputnik news reports: The project, which is expected to be completed in the 2020s, is particularly interesting for Russia due to the cold spell with Turkey, but European and post-Soviet states will also benefit from it. In Iran, “work is underway to construct a navigable channel linking the Caspian and the Persian Gulf,” economic analyst Alexei Chickin observed. The initiative itself is not new. The idea first emerged in the late 19th century and by 1890s Russian engineers developed blueprints for the navigable channel that would offer Russia and others the shortest way to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Turkish Straits and the Suez Canal in Egypt. The project was endorsed by Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2012, former Iranian Energy Minister Majid Namjoo estimated that the cost of the project would be approximately $7 billion. In February 2015, Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the Fars news agency that Khatam-al Anbiya, an engineering company owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was [...]