Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, said last week that a joint commission would be set up with Iran to take forward a plan to build a tunnel under the Gulf, news agency PressTV reports.
It would be the world’s longest tunnel and would boost trade, he said on Wednesday after a visit to Tehran.
Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei said Iran prioritised ties with its neighbours and hoped for reciprocal commitments.
The idea was first raised by the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raeisi during his visit to Qatar in February 2022. Raeisi died in a helicopter crash in May last year.
The tunnel would start at the northern tip of the Qatari peninsula and run for 190km, reaching the Iranian coast near Dayyer.
That’s around three times longer than the current longest transport tunnel in China, a 68km section of the Chengdu metro, and five times longer than the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.
For Qatar, the tunnel would allow it to access Eurasian markets; now, it depends on Saudi Arabia for its land connection to the outside world.
The two countries have had a rocky relationship in the past, reaching a nadir in June 2017, when the Saudis and the UAE led a coalition of countries that tried to impose a complete blockade of Qatar’s sea, air and land routes.
The move improved Qatar’s relations with Iran and Turkey, both of whom supplied food aid.
The tunnel would also improve Qatar’s economic relationship with Russia, Asia and Europe, since it would allow it to access the “North–South” trade route running from the Gulf to the Caspian and the Caucasus.
PressTV notes that Qatar owns 20% of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft “and is one of the largest foreign investors in Russia, with which it seeks strategic partnership”.
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