Lebanon Plans Port Expansion and Railway Links to Gulf, Iraq and Turkey

Lebanon's Minister of Public Works and Transport has announced plans to raise the annual handling capacity of the Port of Beirut to 3 million containers and that of the Port of Tripoli to more than 1 million, alongside a railway study, expected within two months, that would link Lebanese ports to Iraq, Turkey and the Gulf as part of a unified regional transport network, Anadolu Agency's Arabic service reported.

The targets represent a sharp increase on current volumes. Beirut, Lebanon's main gateway, handled roughly 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units a year before the 4 August 2020 explosion that destroyed much of the port and killed more than 200 people. Its container terminal has been operated since 2022 by France's CMA CGM under a ten-year concession that included commitments to invest in equipment and expand capacity. Tripoli, in the north, about 30 kilometres from the Syrian border, has served as a partial alternative since the blast but handles a fraction of Beirut's traffic.

The railway component would revive a network that has been out of service since the civil war era. Lebanon's last trains ran in the 1990s, and the state railway authority has since managed only disused track and stations. Any new link would need to cross Syria to reach Iraq or Turkey, making the study dependent on political and security conditions beyond Beirut's control.

The plan aligns with Iraq's Development Road, a project to move goods from the Grand Faw port on the Gulf northward by rail and motorway to Turkey and on to Europe, which Qatar and the United Arab Emirates joined as partners through a memorandum signed in Baghdad in April 2024. Lebanese officials have argued that ports on the eastern Mediterranean could serve as a western outlet for that corridor.

Gulf states remain central to Lebanon's reconstruction financing. Qatar has provided repeated support to the Lebanese army, including fuel and salary assistance, and was among the first donors after the 2020 explosion. The minister gave no cost estimate or funding source for the port expansion, and the railway study has yet to be published.