Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated Chabahar port on Sunday, which is seen as seen as a strategy by India to counter China’s development of Gwadar port in Pakistan, barely 100 km from Iran’s Chabahar.

The project in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by 60 foreign guests from 17 countries, including Indian Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan, at the port located by the Sea of Oman.

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The port’s inauguration comes more than a month after the first consignment of wheat from India to Afghanistan was sent via Chabahar – the first shipment after the trilateral agreement to develop the port as a transport and transit corridor between India, Iran and Afghanistan was signed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Iranian and Afghan Presidents Rouhani and Ashraf Ghani, respectively, in May last year.

Swaraj’s unscheduled visit to Iran

Ahead of the inauguration, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made an unscheduled visit to Tehran on her return from Russian city of Sochi where she had attended the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

On Saturday, Swaraj met her Iranian counterpart Javed Zarif held a meeting on Saturday in Tehran and discussed about the Chabahar port project among other issues.

HER ARE SOME FACTS ABOUT CHABAHAR PORT:

The Chabahar port is located 645 km to the south of Zahedan, the provincial capital city, the only oceanic port of Iran will now link its Sistan and Baluchestan provinces to Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Besides the bilateral pact to develop the Chabahar port, for which India will invest $500 million, a trilateral Agreement on Transport and Transit Corridor has also been signed by India, Afghanistan and Iran.

The Chabahar port has also increased its capacity from 2.5 million tons to 8.5 million tons. The port is an interconnector between South-East Asia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan.

In the first phase of the Shahid Beheshti Chabahar Port, 15 million cubic meters of dredging, 203 hectares of new land, 1,650 wavelength breakers, and the depth of the pond is 16 and 1.5 square meters.

A total of $ 1 billion has been spent on preparing and equipping the first phase of the Shahid Beheshti Chabahar Port.

Currently 100,000 ton ships are capable of mooring, and this can have a significant role in importing and exporting basic and general goods.

The next four phases of Shahid Beheshti Chabahar port will be completed and will be put into operation, which will ultimately reach 82 million tons.

(With agency inputs)