How and with whose help are Iranian truckers bypassing EU sanctions?

The imposition of a state insurance embargo on Iran by EU member states has added to the difficulty of obtaining visas for Iranian truck drivers traversing European routes — so much so that their jobs, which had been on the decline since the beginning of last year, almost became extinct.

While Germany and Italy were Iranian drivers’ only hope for visas for a while, Ali Mahmoudi Sarai, the chairman of the board of directors of the Iranian Transport and Logistics Federation, said that both countries have severely restricted visa issuance and that the minimum waiting time for visas has now reached more than three months.

France, meanwhile, stopped issuing permits for Iranian drivers and their trucks altogether at the beginning of 2023.

A year ago, a group of Iranian drivers wrote in a letter to the Iranian Road Transport Authority that “visas can no longer be obtained from embassies without the presence of speculators” — third-party intermediaries making a huge profit from the process.

However, the problem with Iranian trucks isn’t just drivers getting their visas. According to Sarai, the imposition of EU sanctions against Iran started a few months ago in the case of Green Card insurance as well.

The Green Card is an international third-party insurance system for road accident and injury protection. It was first established in 1949, and Tehran joined in the 1970s.

In Iran, Central Insurance, which is state-owned, delegated the license to issue to Iran Insurance, another state-owned insurance company.

As even stronger sanctions against Iranian banks and state insurers began to be implemented, it became virtually impossible to issue green insurance from early 2024.

Although Iran has begun efforts to create a private insurance company to lift Iran’s suspension from the Green Card Coordinated Insurance System Convention, it has so far not succeeded.

Why are so few Iranian trucks still seen on Europe’s roads?

While some Iranian drivers operating on the European transit line still have valid unexpired visas and some still manage to obtain visas after long waits — from Italy and Germany, for instance — few have valid green insurance.

Green insurance is issued on an annual, quarterly, and single-trip basis, depending on the type of truck purchase.

So there are still trucks whose insurance validity has not yet expired and can therefore travel on European roads, while some Iranian drivers who don’t have a visa problem buy their insurance from a third country.

But according to Sarai, Iranian trucks are insured through intermediaries and speculators at Bulgaria’s border at three times the normal price.

Mohammad Eigharlou, secretary general of the same organisation, has also told Iranian media that many drivers are resorting to seeing insurance policies from Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey.

Who benefits from the absence of Iranian drivers?

Transport industry activists in Iran say that Iran’s share in road transit is now being dwarfed by trucks from Turkey, Georgia and Greece.

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“Turkish trucks have taken the place of Iranian trucks on European routes, and transit load on the European route is being shifted with Turkish trucks,” Sarai told Iranian media.

Reza Rostami, chairman of the Transport, Transit, and Logistics Commission of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, said that “baggage owners prefer to use foreign trucks and foreign drivers in Turkey, Georgia and so on to transport cargo because these drivers come to Iran under the cover of green insurance and lower costs are imposed on the cargo owner, but the consequence is unemployment of Iranian truck drivers.”

The crunch facing Iranian truckers is not confined to the EU. As Sarai said, “Today, there are very few drivers operating on Russian roads — only refrigerated trucks.”

“Even the visas of countries with better relations with Iran, such as Russia and Belarus, are not handled directly by companies and should definitely be applied for by visa speculators,” Iranian drivers wrote in last year’s letter.

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Sarai announced the imposition of new EU sanctions against Iran last Tuesday in a conversation with the ILNA news agency, and announced that the loading of 182 European goods on Iranian trucks has been banned under the new sanctions.