Turkey, Saudi Arabia agree on major regional railway line bypassing Israel |
Turkey and Saudi Arabia signed landmark agreements Tuesday for a new railway line connecting the countries via Syria and Jordan, aiming to extend it in the future to Oman to serve as an overland trade route bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, a central oil trade route currently blockaded by the US and Iran amid their war.
Ankara boasted that the project would reduce Israel’s regional influence, and various commentators said the development sidelined the Jewish state’s attempts to set up railway trade routes from East Asia to Europe passing through the country.
While Israel and the US in 2023 backed an ambitious plan to link India with the Middle East, Israel and Europe, this has hinged on a normalization agreement being signed between Jerusalem and Riyadh. Extensive US efforts to broker such a deal have stalled as the Saudis have demanded irreversible progress toward establishing a Palestinian state as a precondition, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government has rejected this out of hand.
The two separate memorandums of understanding signed Tuesday by Turkey and Saudi Arabia are seen as a revival of the Hejaz railway, which ran from Medina to Istanbul in the early 20th........