As the U.S. blockade against Iranian ports threatens long-term damage to the country’s oil infrastructure, Pakistan is opening up an overland shipping route to Iran, which is activating trade routes through the Caspian Sea.

The Pakistan corridors and Caspian alternatives can move food and consumer goods but neither route solves Iran’s core problem.

The new land route and alternate sea route can’t move oil at volume, as the U.S. blockade of Iran’s primary oil trade route, the Strait of Hormuz, enters its third week.

That may be one reason why the White House has made no comment about news of a new trade route with Pakistan.

Islamabad issued a transit order on Saturday designating six emergency land corridors through Balochistan, linking Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar to Iranian border crossings at Gabd and Taftan in Iran.

The move comes under a 2008 transit and trade agreement between Islamabad and Tehran.

Currently, more than 3,000 shipping containers destined for Iran are stacked up at Karachi port, unable to move, according to Pakistani authorities.

Iran’s Caspian activation faces its own vulnerabilities.

Early in the war, Israeli aircraft struck Bandar Anzali, Iran’s primary Caspian naval outpost, destroying port facilities, military headquarters and shipyard infrastructure in the first-ever missile attack on the Caspian Sea, said Radio Free Europe.

Separately, Iran’s Food Industry Associations Union head, Mohammadreza Mortazavi, confirmed Tehran has activated the Caspian Sea route and northern land and rail borders as alternatives to the Strait, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“At present, there is no problem with the country’s food security, but maintaining this situation requires careful planning,” Mortazavi said via the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, noted the AP.

Yet, there is no overland or northern maritime infrastructure capable of exporting meaningful volumes of Iranian crude oil, which is the real chokehold the U.S. has over Tehran.

Iran claims to have slipped 4 million barrels of oil past the U.S. fleet since the blockade started nearly three weeks ago, compared to pre-war shipments of 1.8 million barrels daily.

This presents a problem for Iran, which either needs to store the oil someplace or shut down production, which would risk damage to the wells.

Iran’s primary fields are already declining at 5-8% annually, with additional shutdowns risking water and gas leaking through fractures and creating a permanent loss of production capacity, according to Iran International.

Those losses could reach 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day, worth between $9 and $15 billion in annual revenue, the independent Persian news wire said.

At Iran’s pre-war nominal GDP of approximately $437 billion (2024), the permanent capacity loss represents up to 3.5% of the entire Iranian economy, structural damage that no peace deal can reverse.

The decision window for Iran falls between May 16 and May 20, at which point Tehran must either move significant volumes of oil to China or begin shutting down oil wells at scale, said Newsweek.

“[It] sounds like flipping a switch,” noted the Newsweek analysis. “You stop producing today and resume tomorrow. But in reality, it’s closer to turning off a complex plumbing system that was never designed to sit idle.”

If production doesn’t resume by July, the wells could suffer permanent capacity damage.

Rystad Energy’s director of Middle East research told Bloomberg that restoring full production takes four to five weeks under the best conditions.

Goldman Sachs assessed Iran’s low-pressure reservoirs as making restart “materially more complex” than other producers.

That could be why over the weekend President Donald Trump canceled negotiations for a peace agreement.

Iran subsequently offered Washington a deal through Pakistani mediators to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which would solve their oil storage problem, and end the war, while deferring nuclear talks entirely, according to Axios.

Trump’s national security team reviewed the proposal in the Situation Room while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the port closure is “tightening by the hour.”

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the U.S. will not negotiate through the press,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Axios. “As the president has said, the United States holds the cards and will only make a deal that puts the American people first, never allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”