Diplomacy as a Road to Development

Diplomacy as a Highway to Development

Diplomacy as a Highway to Development: According to Iran Gate, developing infrastructure in today’s world is essential for achieving development. In the years following the revolution, although we have witnessed progress in some areas, there were many development opportunities that were lost one after another, and some even turned into threats.

Neglecting the issue of road diplomacy is one of those lost opportunities. A country whose king once ordered the construction of the Royal Road today has the least achievements in this area. The Royal Road was built by the order of Darius the Great of the Achaemenid Empire. This highway had two branches: one from Pasargadae, the capital of the Achaemenids, and the other from Ecbatana, their summer capital, which joined near Susa and then continued towards Mesopotamia and Western Anatolia.

Although it is said that Iran is located at the crossroads of global corridors, the lack of effective communication with the West and East has caused this opportunity to be lost, and now in extra time, we want to return to road diplomacy once again.

Recently, the Minister of Roads and Urban Development stated that in recent days, the Saudi Arabian Civil Aviation Authority officially requested to establish three flights per week outside of Hajj flights. On the other hand, efforts are being made these days to activate the North-South Corridor through Iran, Armenia, and Georgia to the Black Sea.

A corridor that holds potential advantages for India. In this trade route, the Baku government will be sidelined. In the potential trilateral axis meeting of Iran-India-Armenia, the focus is on trade, especially a trade route that, by connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea through Armenia, facilitates Indian goods’ access to the Western market, effectively excluding Azerbaijan from India’s trade route with Europe and replacing it with Armenia and Georgia.

Road diplomacy and its importance must once again be at the center of our governance. The emergence of roads and road diplomacy and corridors around our country is active, and every country is seeking new geography for itself, outlining its interests excluding Iran.

A few years ago, when Qatar’s relations with other Arab countries became tense, road diplomacy once sweetened our situation, and we know how beneficial and valuable this type of diplomacy is for the country. Unfortunately, the strategic crossroads in road diplomacy is still less understood.

It was in June 2017 when, with increased tensions between Qatar and some Arab countries, Qatar’s neighbors closed their skies to Qatari flights, and Iran’s sky became the savior for this developing Arab country. Iran gained substantial financial benefits and defined a global role for itself. It reached a point where the New York Times examined President Trump’s efforts in the final days of his administration to increase pressure on Iran, writing that Washington believes by diverting Qatar’s transit flights from Iran’s airspace, it can prevent millions of dollars in revenue from reaching Tehran.

At that time, the New York Times wrote that American diplomats say if Qatari flights pass through Saudi airspace instead of Iran’s, it would reduce Iran’s annual revenue by 100 million dollars.

Diplomacy and establishing strategic relationships with today’s world is not a simple task. If our governance system wants to take road diplomacy and geopolitics seriously, it must recreate priorities in a way that reduces tense relations with other countries. We almost have no strategic relationship with any country, and even if at times Iran has moved closer to the West or the East, it has been tactical. It seems that conflict with many countries is a constant pillar of our governance system and diplomacy.

Now that we are in extra time and at a time when all countries have made their alliances, we are thinking about road diplomacy, so we must understand the complexities of the global system and extricate the country from the ideological situation it is trapped in, and redefine our interests with other countries of the world.

To achieve this, efficiency is our missing link. We need a governance system and statesmen who understand global relations well and, for instance, know why the New Silk Road has become a symbol of Chinese empowerment and why hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested to advance it. There is no longer time to mistake foreign and domestic policy management with propaganda and remain unaware of the consequences of lacking focus on diplomacy, especially road diplomacy.