MOSCOW, April 20 (Xinhua) -- The construction of the Rasht-Astara railway in Iran, a critical section of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), has been postponed due to tensions in the Middle East, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said Monday.

The executive contract for the project, originally scheduled to be signed on April 1, will now be reviewed in 2026, Jalali said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Vedomosti.

Temporary constraints triggered by the current geopolitical situation highlight the need to facilitate logistics infrastructure and routes, he said, noting that the INSTC could make trade between the two countries more active than before.

Earlier in April, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk said that construction of the railway, which will connect Russian and Iranian road networks into a unified system, was continuing.

The INSTC is a multimodal transportation network that spans roughly 7,200 km from St. Petersburg, Russia to the port of Mumbai, India. It consists of three primary routes: the Trans-Caspian route, which combines railways and ports, as well as the western and eastern overland routes.

Russia and Iran signed documents in May 2023 to complete the final section of the western route of the corridor, namely the Rasht-Astara line in Iran. ■