Georgia plays viral transit role connecting Iran to Europe

Georgia will play an important role connecting Iran to Europe thanks to a new transit corridor that Iran and Bulgaria are opening through Georgia.

Iran and Bulgaria signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last week, which confirmed the two countries would jointly open a transit corridor through Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and the Black Sea.

Iran’s Mehr news agency reported the transit corridor would be used for passengers and cargo routes.

Experts believed establishing the new corridor would have considerable impacts on the whole region developing intra-regional transportation of passengers and goods.

The drafting of the protocol of the agreement will be penned and revised in Iran’s capital Tehran and Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, and ready to be signed in 2016 by the Transportation Ministers of the countries in the corridor, reported Mehr.

It is believed the new corridor will replace the Turkish path, which has been targeted by terrorists attacks in recent months.

Ambassador of Iran to Georgia Abbas Talebifar said Iran and Georgia currently enjoyed some of the best relations they’ve ever had.

We have very good parliamentary cooperation. During the last year parliamentary delegations of all levels paid visits to Iran. At the beginning of 2016 Iran’s Parliament chairman planned to visit Georgia. Economic and political relations are also developing well,” Talebifar said.

In 2015, after about a 10-year pause, a session of the joint inter-governmental economic commission was held in Tehran, which was led by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Giorgi Kvirikashvili. About 80 important treaties were signed between Iran and Georgia. We are now planning to prepare the Georgian Prime Minister's visit to Iran,” he added.

Iranian Ambassador said "no wind, storm or hurricane” could ruin Georgian-Iranian relations.

This was his response to a statement by Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Davit Dondua who recently said: "Our American colleagues asked us to refrain from a full-scale cooperation with Iran until all obligations of Vienna are fulfilled".