Tehran Times - Managing Director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (known as RAI) said Shalamcheh-Basra railway project will be commenced in the upcoming months, IRNA reported.

�Shalamcheh-Basra railway route is 32 kilometers long along which a 700-meter bridge is also going to be constructed,� Saeed Rasouli said on Monday.
According to the official, the project will be completed within a year and the final destination of the railway is the city of Latakia in Syria.
Earlier in July, during a joint meeting between heads of the railways of Iran, Iraq and Syria in Tehran, Iranian Deputy Road Minister Kheirollah Khademi had said Shalamcheh-Basra railway project would be implemented within three months.
Khademi, who is also the head of Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company, said that after signing a cooperation agreement between Iran and Iraq, the contractor and investor of the 32-kilometer railroad were designated.
According to the official, Islamic Republic of Iran�s Mostazafan Foundation was set to fund the project as the Iranian party of the agreement.
�We are ready to implement the project in Iraq, expecting the Iraqi government to allocate the intended land of the project to us,� he stated.
Iran, Iraq and Syria held a tripartite meeting on July 1 in Tehran for discussing expansion of transportation cooperation among the three countries.
Development of rail transport, increasing transit, development of exports and imports, and implementation of the Shalamcheh-Basra railway were among the topics discussed in the meeting.
In early June Iran�s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami had named holding talks with Iraqi side on selecting a contractor for Shalamcheh-Basra railway among his ministry�s top priorities during the current Iranian year (ending on March 20, 2020).