[gn]

I've personally been to Iran, Russia, and a handful of other ex-USSR countries, and I can't see any real obstacles here. Even those countries in this region that suck at stable government tend to be fairly good at reliable infrastructure; California-style rolling brownouts or Manhattan-type shitty metro cars would be more or less unthinkable here. I'm pretty certain people and politicians alike are ready to embrace this project. In the former Soviet block and in the Middle East alike, especially in Turkey, rail networks still symbolize progress and prosperity like nothing else.

[mseebach]

One word: Visas. As it now, you need a transit-visa just to change planes in Moscow. Travelling through, what, 11 countries, each one insisting on confirming the identity of each person entering the country and making sure they exit again? The alternative is sealing people inside the cars, which is what they do on the Kaliningrad-Moscow train that passes through Lithuania and Belarus, but that's logistically problematic, when there are stops in more than two countries.

There are very real political problems to this, and while some of them can be resolved easily, I'd like to remind people that the TGV rail system in France is frequently brought to a halt by protesting farmers who park a tractor on the track. And that's just one country (two if you ask the angry farmers - Paris and the 'real people').

[gn]

You do have a point there; trains are a lot easier to stop than planes or ships and the visa thing can be a pain here, even with a very good passport. Consider, however, that most countries in this region have a +lot+ of experience with commercial land passenger vehicles going across multiple borders.

I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria right now. There is a daily direct bus connection from here to Tehran. It does take 48 hours but it's safe, it's clean, and it gets me there.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, there will be problems and setbacks, but more likely than not they will find a way eventually.