Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian began a visit to Iraq on Wednesday, aiming to deepen already close ties with the neighbouring country during his first foreign trip since taking office.
The three-day visit comes amid turmoil in the Middle East over the war in Gaza, which has emboldened Iran-backed armed groups in the region and complicated Iraq’s relations with the United States.
“Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani welcomes President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian,” the Iraqi prime minister’s office said in a brief statement, which also carried a photo of the two men shaking hands at Baghdad airport.
Pezeshkian has vowed to make relations with neighbouring countries a priority, as he seeks to ease Iran’s international isolation and mitigate the impact of U.S.-led sanctions on its economy.
His visit comes at a time when Western powers on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Iran for supplying short-range missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani warned Britain, France and Germany that they would “face appropriate and proportionate action” for this “hostile” move.
Iraqi security officials said an explosion occurred at the airport, used by the US-led anti-jihadist coalition, hours before Pezeshkian’s arrival.
A spokesman for the Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq said Tuesday night’s “attack” was aimed at “disrupting the visit of the Iranian president.”
Ties between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown close since the 2003 US-led invasion overthrew the Sunni-dominated government of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Iraq is one of our friends, brothers and Muslim countries,” Pezeshkian said before leaving Iran, according to footage broadcast on Iranian state television.
“And that is why we will be visiting this country as our first visit,” he said.
Pezeshkian, who took office in July following early elections after the death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, has previously linked the pressure of sanctions to strengthening ties.
“Relations with neighbouring countries…can largely neutralise the pressure of sanctions,” he said last month.
Iran has faced years of Western sanctions, particularly by its arch-enemy the United States, led by then-President Donald Trump, after it unilaterally scrapped a landmark nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and major powers in 2018.
Pezeshkian has named Mohammad Javad Zarif, the top diplomat who negotiated the 2015 deal, as his vice president for strategic affairs, part of his push for a more open Iran.
Major trading partners
Iran has become one of Iraq’s major trading partners and has considerable political influence in Baghdad, where its Iraqi allies dominate the parliament and the current government.
Millions of Iranian pilgrims travel to Iraq’s Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala each year, and Pezeshkian will also visit shrines there during his trip.
Non-oil trade between Iran and Iraq reached nearly $5 billion in the five months to March 2024, Iranian media reported.
Iran, under regular exemptions from US sanctions, also exports millions of cubic metres of gas per day to Iraq to fuel its power plants.
Iraq owes billions of dollars in payments for imports, which meet 30 percent of its electricity needs.
Political scientist Ali al-Baidar said expanding trade ties was a key goal of Pezeshkian’s visit.
“Iran needs the Iraqi market for its exports, just as it needs Iraq’s energy imports,” the Iraqi analyst said.
Withdrawal of American troops
Washington still has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighbouring Syria as part of an international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group.
Last winter, U.S.-led coalition forces in both Iraq and Syria were targeted dozens of times by drone and rocket attacks, as violence related to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza drew in Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East.
This barrage of attacks resulted in retaliatory US air strikes in both countries.
On Sunday, Iraqi Defence Minister Thabet al-Abbasi told pan-Arab television channel Al-Hadath that the US-led coalition would pull out of most of Iraq by September 2025 and the Kurdish autonomous region by September 2026.
Despite months of talks, Baghdad and Washington have yet to agree on target dates.
Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that Pezeshkian will also visit the Kurdish regional capital, Arbil, for talks with Kurdish officials.
In March last year, Tehran signed a security deal with the federal government in Baghdad after the country launched air strikes on bases of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups in the autonomous region.
They have since agreed to disarm the rebels and remove them from the border areas.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
