Asia

Home page

Asia

Thousands of trucks stuck as partial as Iran-Pakistan trade resumes

26 October 2026 14:44 (UTC +04:00)

Thousands of trucks remain stranded on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border despite the resumption of limited overland trade between the two countries, southwest Pakistan business representatives told AFP on Monday.

Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati, president of the chamber of commerce for Gwadar city on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, said the frontier with Iran was “only partially open” to trade, with a vast backlog of vehicles at the border.

There were “three to four thousand trucks on the Iranian side and two to three thousand trucks on the Pakistani side,” Kalmati said.

Only certain vehicles were being allowed across the border to clear the backlog after a week-long closure, he said.

Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said on X on Sunday there were no restrictions on the Iranian side, including for the export of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

He blamed the closures on “changes in the implementation of Pakistan’s E-Form procedure for imports from Iran,” which he said “have created a situation in which traders are effectively and literally unable to dispatch cargo from Iran to Pakistan.”

Kalmati said companies on both sides of the border were urging authorities to allow the complete resumption of trade.

He said his members and drivers were “frustrated, they want to go back home, they want to continue their business.”

Fida Ahmad Dashti a businessman in Kech district in Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province, said he had been told that only vehicles with paperwork prepared before October 16 were being allowed to cross the border.

Two other businessmen based in Balochistan confirmed their drivers had said only vehicles with documents prepared before October 16 were being allowed across the frontier.

The Gwadar Chamber of Commerce said in a statement on Saturday the suspension of the import of LPG and the “abrupt closure of the border” had led to “disrupting the national LPG supply chain, and causing prices to skyrocket.”

Pakistan has attempted to mediate a peace deal in the Middle East war with Iran and its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was due to travel to Tehran on Monday, his second visit to the Islamic republic in less than a week.