Chabahar Port

Chabahar Port (Persian: بندر چابهار) is a seaport in Chabahar located in southeastern Iran, on the Gulf of Oman. It serves as Iran's only oceanic port, and consists of two separate ports named Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti, each of which has five berths. It is only about 170 kilometres west of the Pakistani port of Gwadar.

Development of the port was first proposed in 1973 by the last Shah of Iran, though development was delayed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The first phase of the port was opened in 1983 during the Iran–Iraq War as Iran began shifting seaborne trade east towards the Pakistani border in order to decrease dependency on ports in the Persian Gulf which were vulnerable to attack by the Iraqi Air Force.

India and Iran first agreed to plans to further develop Shahid Beheshti port in 2003, but did not do so on account of sanctions against Iran. As of 2016, the port has ten berths. In May 2016, India and Iran signed a bilateral agreement in which India would refurbish one of the berths at Shahid Beheshti port, and reconstruct a 600 meter long container handling facility at the port. The port is partly intended to provide an alternative for trade between India and Afghanistan as it is 800 kilometers closer to the border of Afghanistan than Pakistan's Karachi port. The port handled 2.1 million tons of cargo in 2015, which was planned to be upgraded to handle 8.5 million tons by 2016, and to 86 million tons in the future.

In October 2017, India's first shipment of wheat to Afghanistan was sent through the Chabahar Port. In December 2018, India took over the port's operations. Following the re-imposition of sanctions against Iran, foreign companies became reluctant to participate in the port's expansion, and only 10% of the port's 8.5 million-ton total capacity was utilized in 2019. Sanctions also played a role in reducing India's involvement and investment in the US$1.6 billion Chabahar–Zahedan railway.