As for the sanctions, Irans roads minister said the challenge was nothing new."Weve also had a 25 percent rise in the number of ships calling at the port" on the Gulf of Oman, he said.More than 200 hectares (almost 500 acres) of land have been reclaimed from the sea for the project and over 17.Apart from security concerns, US sanctions banning financial transactions with Iran make it ever harder to pay or receive payments..5 million cubic metres (618 million cubic feet) dredged, creating a 16.Tehran: With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the countrys far southeast to maintain the flow of goods.That is due mainly to the pivotal role of the port, and a planned railway line, in breaking landlocked Afghanistans dependence on Pakistan for trade with the world, especially India.It is also the only Iranian port with exemptions from unilateral economic sanctions reimposed by the United States in 2018.Only 20 ships have docked at the new section of the port and most of its three kilometres of waterfront remains unutilised, with new machinery and neatly lined-up cranes standing idle.But Mr Gupta is counting on the ports proximity to India and Afghanistan to attract business. Ever since the (1979 Islamic) revolution, we have been under sanctions and we are working on how to counter them," Eslami said, as he oversaw the unloading of a first shipment of Afghan goods lined up to be re-exported from Chabahar."We will keep on developing this port.5-metre (54-foot) draught."We were born with sanctions."Ive been researching Chabahar for the past year and a half, and the infrastructure is now in place to do serious work here," she said... our rail network, road network and airport are all being developed, so that we can implement the North-South Corridor," Roads and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Eslami told AFP while visiting Chabahar for a development conference.The ships that officials say have docked in the past year have only loaded and unloaded 2.5 million tonnes.1 million tonnes of cargo, a far cry from the ports annual capacity of 8.The Indian company began work in December and has so far handled only an average of 60,000 tonnes of cargo per month."Any port will have a gestation period, there will be lulls but we are very sure that traffic will pick up," Mr Gupta told AFP.Arun Kumar Gupta, managing director of India Ports Global Limited which has a 10-year concession at the new port, played down the startup issues.Afghan trade as well as plans for a trading route by rail between central Asia woodworking machinery and the Indian Ocean called the North-South Corridor are the main reasons the Islamic republic has invested one billion dollars in Chabahars Shahid Beheshti port, official sources say.Some like Afsaneh Rabiani, who runs a freight forwarding company, see Chabahar as an opportunity for "those willing to take the risk".But more than a year since the new installations became operational in December 2017, business has yet to pick up.The port in Chabahar, only about 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the Pakistan border and located on the Indian Ocean, is Irans largest outside the Gulf.Hossein Shahdadi of the provincial ports and maritime authority said that in the first 11 months of the past Iranian year, which started on March 21, 2018, "there has been a 56 percent increase in cargo handled at the port compared with the previous year"