BAGHDAD: Iran and Iraq on Wednesday signed more than a dozen agreements to deepen already strong ties as Masoud Pezeshkian visited Baghdad on his first foreign trip as president of the Islamic republic. The three-day trip comes amid turmoil in the Middle East sparked by the war in Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups and complicated Iraq’s relations with the United States.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Pezeshkian, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said both governments opposed any expansion of the Zionist war in Gaza. “In light of the escalation that the region has been going through, we have spoken a lot about the importance of stability,” Sudani said, blaming the Zionist entity for the regional spillover of the war. Pezeshkian announced that “14 cooperation memorandums were signed between Iran and Iraq, which is the starting point of the expansion of cooperation”. “If we are together, we will avoid falling into the fire,” he added.

Pezeshkian has vowed to make relations with neighboring countries a priority as he seeks to ease Iran’s international isolation and mitigate the impact of US-led sanctions on its economy. His visit comes after Western powers on Tuesday announced fresh sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with short-range missiles for use against Ukraine. Hours before Pezeshkian’s arrival, an explosion rocked a US

diplomatic base at Baghdad’s international airport but caused no casualties, according to the US embassy.

Ties between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled the Sunni-dominated regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Pezeshkian, who took office in July after an early election following the death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, has previously linked shoring up ties to sanctions pressure. “Relations with neighboring countries... can neutralize a significant amount of pressure of the sanctions,” he said last month.

Iran has suffered years of crippling Western sanctions, especially after its arch-foe the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally abandoned a landmark nuclear deal between the Islamic republic and major powers in 2018. Iran has become one of Iraq’s leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad.

Every year, millions of Iranian pilgrims travel to Iraq’s Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and Pezeshkian will also visit the shrines there during his visit. Non-oil trade between Iran and Iraq stood at nearly $5 billion over the five months from March 2024, Iranian media reported. Iran also exports millions of cubic meters of gas a day to Iraq to fuel its power plants, under a regularly renewed waiver from US sanctions.

Iraq is billions of dollars in arrears on its payments for the imports, which cover 30 percent of its electricity needs. Political scientist Ali Al-Baidar said expanding trade ties was a major 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.

Washington still has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighboring Syria as part of an international coalition against the Islamic State group. Last winter, US-led coalition forces in both Iraq and Syria were targeted dozens of times with drones and rocket fire as violence related to the Zionist war in Gaza has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East. The barrage of attacks triggered retaliatory US air strikes in both countries.

On Sunday, Iraqi Defense Minister Thabet al-Abbassi told pan-Arab television channel Al-Hadath that the US-led coalition would pull out of most of Iraq by Sept 2025 and the Kurdish autonomous region by Sept 2026. Despite protracted talks, the target dates have yet to be agreed between Baghdad and Washington.

Speaking to Iraqi media, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was “very happy that the Iraqi parliament has approved the bill that calls for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq”. “Peace and security will not be achieved in our region with the presence of foreign forces,” he added.

Pezeshkian will also travel to the Kurdish regional capital Arbil for talks with Kurdish officials, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said. In March last year, Tehran signed a security agreement with the federal government in Baghdad after launching air strikes against bases of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups in the autonomous region. They have since agreed to disarm the rebels and remove them from border areas. – AFP