Iranian and Russian officials have discussed a plan to build a rail link between Parsabad, a city on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan, and the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.

Iran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, said this after meeting with Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, the Trend news agency reported. No further details were given.

Russia and Iran have been trying since 2005 to develop a transport corridor from Russia through Azerbaijan to Iran’s Persian Gulf coast to give Russia more direct access to the Indian Ocean.

The key to that link was to have been a railway between the Iranian city of Astara on the border with Azerbaijan and Rasht, northeast of Tehran.

But Iran lacks the funding and technical expertise to finish it and would need a major injection of funds from Russia, according to a report last year by the Carnegie Politika think tank.

Pezeshkian issued a general instruction to speed up the Rasht-Astara line, Trend reported.