Iran’s new president, Massoud Pezeshkian, is expected in Iraq on Wednesday for his first foreign visit since his election, with a view to deepening the already close ties between the two neighboring countries.
In a tense regional context, his arrival was preceded, on Tuesday evening, by an explosion on a base used by the international anti-jihadist coalition at Baghdad airport.
A senior security official attributed the explosion to “two Katyusha rockets.” And a military spokesman for the Hezbollah Brigades, an influential pro-Iran armed group, denounced an “attack” whose “aim is to disrupt the Iranian president’s visit.”
Mr. Pezeshkian has pledged to make relations with neighboring countries a priority as he seeks to ease Iran’s international isolation and limit the impact of U.S.-imposed sanctions on its economy.
“Relations with neighboring countries can significantly reduce the pressure of sanctions,” he said in August.
Iran has suffered years of Western sanctions, particularly after the United States, Tehran’s arch-enemy, unilaterally withdrew from the international Iran nuclear deal in 2018 under President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, the French, German and British governments announced that they would impose new sanctions on Tehran following “Iran’s export and Russia’s acquisition of Iranian ballistic missiles.” Russia is also under Western sanctions due to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
President Pezeshkian, who took office in late July, succeeding Ebrahim Raisi who was killed in a helicopter crash, has appointed the senior diplomat who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal, Mohammad Javad Zarif, as vice president for strategic affairs.
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Ties between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which toppled the Sunni-dominated regime of dictator Saddam Hussein.
This visit “will be an opportunity to promote and deepen friendly and fraternal relations between the two countries in various fields,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told reporters on Monday.
– Important business partner –
Iran has become one of Iraq’s most important trading partners and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad, where its Iraqi allies are strongly represented in parliament and government.
Every year, millions of Iranian pilgrims travel to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
Non-oil trade between Iran and Iraq amounted to nearly $5 billion in the five months since March 2024, according to Iranian media reports.
Iran also exports millions of cubic meters of gas per day to Iraq to fuel its power plants, under a regularly renewed waiver of US sanctions.
Iraq is in arrears paying billions of dollars for these imports, which cover 30% of its electricity needs.
In September 2023, the two countries began construction of their first rail link: a 32-kilometer line between the southern Iraqi port city of Basra and the Chalamcheh border crossing, where it will join Iran’s rail network.
Mr Pezeshkian’s visit comes amid tensions in the Middle East over the war since October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
During his trip, Mr. Pezeshkian will also go to Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to meet some senior officials of this region, according to the Irna agency.
In March 2023, Tehran signed a security agreement with the federal government in Baghdad after carrying out airstrikes against bases of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups in the autonomous region. Both sides have since agreed to disarm the rebels and move them away from border areas.
Tehran accuses the rebels of smuggling weapons from Iraq and encouraging protests that erupted in 2022 following the death in custody of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, arrested for violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
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