Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visited Iraq on his first foreign trip, signaling the clerical establishment’s intention to strengthen ties with a strategic ally of Tehran and Washington as regional tensions rise.
Pezeshkian met Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani at the start of a three-day visit that Tehran and Baghdad said would include the signing of several agreements and discussion of the Gaza war and the situation in the Middle East.
“The expansion of bilateral ties, as well as regional and international issues such as the ongoing crimes of the Israeli regime against the oppressed people of Palestine and the need to stop the war and genocide in Gaza, will be discussed,” Pezeshkian’s office said in a statement.
A rare partner of both the United States and Iran, Iraq hosts 2,500 US troops and has Iran-backed armed factions linked to its security forces. It has suffered escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war began in Gaza in October.
The Iraqi prime minister’s media office said the two countries had signed 14 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in different fields including trade, sports, agriculture, cultural cooperation, education, media, communications, and tourism.
Pezeshkian visited a monument for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani who was killed, in a US drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, Iranian state media reported.
