Hormuz showed why Gulf rail matters — and why it is not ready

More than a month into the Iran war, rail remains stuck in a strategic gray zone — too developed to ignore, yet too fragmented to carry the weight of a true contingency network. The region still lacks a seamless inland spine, leaving rail as a partial option rather than a decisive solution. In contrast, ports along the eastern coast outside the Strait of Hormuz continue to offer the clearest pressure release, with overland distribution still making the most sense in theory.

That’s not to say rail played no role. When the first wave of disruption hit, cargo flows were rerouted toward eastern UAE ports, Omani gateways, and Red Sea alternatives, before being pushed inland. But that inland stretch defaulted to trucking. Rail simply wasn’t ready — the network remained incomplete, with limited cross-border links and misaligned port–rail connections.

Where rail is actually moving

What has changed is not scale, but direction. The map is filling in at the edges — unevenly, but now physically rather than just on paper. The clearest movement is along the Indian Ocean side.

Only one corridor is operational: Etihad Rail’s Package D line to Fujairah remains the region’s only heavy rail link to the Indian Ocean. Khorfakkan still lacks a rail connection, despite earlier plans for a spur. The link to Sohar is progressing via Hafeet Rail — around 40% complete, with construction advancing across Al Ain, Buraimi, and Wadi Al Jizzi, Urs Mosimann, a former strategy director at Etihad Rail and a Dubai-based transport, logistics, and infrastructure expert, tells EnterpriseAM.

Jordan is the clearest new northbound piece: The UAE and Jordan are moving ahead withthe USD 2.3 bn Aqaba railway, in a 360 km rail line that will link Aqaba port to Jordan’s mining hubs in Al Shidiya and Ghor es-safi.

Saudi Arabia’s role is still forming, but the direction of travel is becoming clearer. Riyadh and Amman are beginning to formalize the idea of a through-connection, even if the route itself remains unsettled.

Where Saudi clicks in: Saudi Arabia and Jordan are activating a joint committee to study a rail line via Syria, including route options and technical alignment. The line would cover Jaber (Jordan-Syria) and Al Omari (Jordan-Saudi), plugging Jordan into a north-south freight spine.

Beyond that, the longer-term vision is shifting toward Mediterranean access — stitching together existing projects into a viable alternative corridor.

Turkey is in the play — but the bigger picture is Mediterranean connectivity. “Saudi Arabia has separately commissioned studies on a Saudi-Turkey rail link through Jordan and Syria. Together, these form a credible path to a northbound rail corridor reaching Mediterranean ports, reducing reliance on the Strait of Hormuz entirely,” Mosimann notes.

The missing link is Syria: Signals from Damascus point in both directions — toward reconstruction, but without firm commitments yet in place. Syria’s Transport Ministry shutdown reports of a finalized USD 200 mn rail agreement with the World Bank as inaccurate, stressing that the project is still under discussion with no agreement signed.

Rail’s real ceiling

Plenty of berth space, less inland muscle: Ports on the UAE’s east coast — along the Gulf of Oman, outside Hormuz — can take more diverted cargo than the rail debate often assumes, but that doesn’t mean the system can carry it inland at scale. Port capacity is not the constraint — inland movement is.

The capacity to absorb a redirection is already established: Fujairah Terminals now maintains a capacity of 720k TEUs of container capacity, while Khorfakkan Port provides further critical scale, with a current capacity of 5 mn TEUs. Meanwhile, the Port of Sohar — which handled 943k TEUs in 2024 — continues to expand its footprint. “Taken together, the east coast ports have several mn TEUs of port capacity that could be activated during a Hormuz event,” Mosimann notes.

The handoff is the chokepoint: The problem isn’t getting cargo off ships — it’s moving it inland. That transition point is where congestion and limits start to appear, because the transport network isn’t as strong as the ports.

Progress is visible — but integration remains limited. Physical connectivity is beginning to materialize, with a bonded rail corridor from Khalifa Port to Fujairah port terminals — a project that aims to connect the two ports to their adjacent freezones, forming a “customs corridor” that could help reduce clearance times through coordinated customs operations. But the network remains incomplete: Khorfakkan still lacks a rail connection, with no confirmed spur despite earlier plans. “Building a rail-port interchange at Khorfakkan is the cleanest single investment that would unlock meaningful east coast rail capacity,” Mosimann adds.

The network needs scaling: “Etihad Rail’s current freight fleet is sized for today’s contracted volumes. Scaling it to absorb mns of TEUs of diverted maritime cargo would require an order for additional locomotives and container wagons,” Mosimann says. Package D was built to allow a second track later, but it is still operating on a single -track basis now. That setup can handle volumes in the hundreds of thousands of TEUs annually — double-tracking would lift capacity into the low mns,” he adds.

Incremental gains, not a full substitute: Rail can help, but under the current setup, its role remains bounded. “Today, rail could realistically absorb a low-hundreds-of-thousands of TEUs of diverted cargo,” Mosimann says. “With a focused program of a Khorfakkan rail spur and terminal, double-tracking Package D, additional rolling stock, and inland terminal capacity expansion, the realistic rail-carried share could be lifted into the low mns of TEUs within a three to five year window,” he adds.

The fragility factor

Harder to scale, easier to hit: Rail may promise efficiency, but it also concentrates risk in ways road networks largely avoid

A single point of failure can stop everything: “If an adversary actually wanted to disrupt a Hormuz workaround, rail would be easier to target than road,” Mosimann argues. A single hit to a rail bridge, tunnel entrance, or substation could stop the whole corridor, and fixing the damage could take weeks or months, he tells us.

Flexibility matters more than efficiency under stress: Road networks offer multiple routing options, faster repair cycles, and the ability to work around damage in real time. Rail, by contrast, is less about absorbing shocks mid-crisis and more about adding efficiency and capacity when conditions are stable — or when disruptions build gradually rather than suddenly, Mosimann says.