An Analysis of the Role of Iranian Marine Ports and Transit Routes in Global Supply Chain

With the line to growth of world trade, Iran as a historical transit route could play a new role in the changing world and integrated global supply chain. Iran is geographically situated in a strategic location mid-way within major East-West and North-South trade routes .Iran therefore has potential advantages to provide a cheaper and quicker alternative to the traditional ocean-shipping based liner route from the Far East to Europe. Iran’s economy is very much dependent upon crude oil .The development of transport corridors can creates new source of incomes and accelerate development of Iran role in world trade and promote economic growth through the improvement of trade competitiveness and diversifying and enhancing its own economy whilst also further integrating itself within the international global supply chain. The Iranian road and rail organizations and related ministries and Port and maritime Organization decided to develop Iranian transit routes with a focus on key container terminals such as Shahaid Rajaee and Amir Abad. Iran Transport corridors are identified and examined with a view to providing critical information about the trade movements, existing corridors and regional hubs, international transportation networks as well as routes that are part of the transportation linkages thus they could attracted much transit volume. The present research has been conducted to identify and prioritize the strategies for improving Iran transit role. The present study has been performed at three stages .Firstly, internal and external factors involving in the transit operation were identified within a review of the literature and used of SWOT analysis for categorizing them. Secondly, Executive strategies that can be applied to improving the transit role of Iranian routes were formalized employing Delphi technique by aid of managers of khorramshahr container terminal and the strategies, were prioritized by using of QSPM approach. Thirdly, the role of Iranian transit routes and their container terminals in repositioning of empty containers were analyzed.