Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan believes a railway between the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea can actually happen. He put the case forward on October 2 at a session of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council, the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union. His argument leaned on the TRIP project, the US-backed corridor scheme meant to run across Armenia's far south along the Iranian border. Built and opened, it would let freight move by rail from Gulf ports toward Armenia and on to Black Sea harbors. In his reading, completing the project unlocks exactly that north-south connection. Washington attached its name to a version of the route agreed between Yerevan and Baku in August. Skeptics still ask who would control and run the stretch, a question that has stalled earlier versions of the idea.