Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi arrived in Iran’s capital Tehran on his first visit abroad since he took office more than two months ago.
Al-Kadhimi, who was greeted by officials at Mehrabad airport on Tuesday, is expected to meet with senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
His delegation includes Iraq’s foreign affairs, finance, health and planning ministers as well as its national security adviser, according to the Iranian media.
“We hope to have constructive talks to deepen relations” between the two countries, said Iran government spokesman Ali Rabiei.
The Iraqi prime minister had been scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia for his first trip abroad, before heading to Iran in a carefully calibrated balancing act between the two regional rivals.
However, his trip to Riyadh was postponed after Saudi King Salman was hospitalized on Monday.
Baghdad is often caught up in the tug-of-war between Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United States, which al-Kadhimi will also visit in the coming weeks.
Over the weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Baghdad on his first trip to Iraq since a US drone attack in January killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani outside the Iraqi capital’s international airport.
The attack brought Iraq to the brink of a power war between the United States and Iran that could have destabilized the Middle East.
Before Zarif’s visit, Iraqi security analyst Ahmad al-Abyad told Al Jazeera that the trip must communicate “two messages.”
“One is a muffled warning to al-Kadhimi not to go ahead with attempts to shore up economic ties with the Gulf states, and the other is a mediation message to its regional rival Saudi Arabia.”
In Baghdad, Zarif visited the site where Soleimani, who led the overseas arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was assassinated, saying that “relations between Iran and Iraq will not be shaken.”
Al-Kadhimi, a former head of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, became prime minister in May after nearly six months of disputes in the wake of a political crisis sparked by months of protests against the establishment.
He has been a staunch defender of Iraq’s sovereignty and has annoyed armed groups within Iraq affiliated with Iran, such as the Kataib Hezbollah militia. Last month, al-Khadimi ordered a raid on a Kataib Hezbollah base in Baghdad, leading to the arrest of 14 of its members. Within days, 13 of the detainees were released and the militia promised to take legal action against al-Kadhimi.
Meanwhile, Iran sees Iraq as a possible route to avoid the crippling U.S. sanctions that President Donald Trump re-imposed on Tehran in 2018 after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers.
Last year, Iran’s exports to Iraq totaled nearly $ 9 billion, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday. He said the two nations will discuss increasing that amount to $ 20 billion.
Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus, religious tourism between Iraq and Iran has stopped. Before the pandemic, some five million tourists, with nearly $ 5 billion a year, visited Shiite holy sites in the two countries.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
.
