Iran Press/ Iran News: The Islamic Republic became an acceding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a political, economic, and security bloc comprising over half of Eurasia, at the SCO’s summit in Samarkand last month. In the years before that, Iran worked to build strategic ties with SCO heavyweights, including Russia and China.
Iran has floated an ambitious project to connect the national electricity grid to those of Russia and Central Asian SCO members via a transmission line passing through Turkmenistan, Deputy Energy Minister for International Affairs Mohammad-Ali Farahnakian has announced, according to Sputnik News.
“We are trying to connect our country’s energy system to Russia through the eastern side of the Caspian Sea,” Farahnakian said on Sunday.
The plan would “make it possible to exchange electricity with members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” and was first raised at the summit of the Caspian Sea states in June in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the official said.
Farahnakian, who also serves as an advisor to Minister of Energy Ali Akbar Mehrabian, specified that Russia and other former Soviet states already share a connection via a unified electricity grid, and that all that’s needed for Tehran to link up to the network is to build a powerful new transmission line through Turkmenistan. The Islamic Republic has completed the infrastructure up to the border, with action now needed from the Turkmenistani side.
Iran exports vast quantities of its ample domestically-sourced electricity supplies to its neighbors, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iranian electricity sales to Iraq over the past two decades have proved crucial in staving off a socio-economic disaster after a substantial portion of Baghdad’s domestic generating capacity was destroyed by Western sanctions, the 2003 US invasion, and ISIS.
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