Iran’s President Pezeshkian heads to Iraq on first foreign trip
Al Jazeera
Tehran looking to boost trade ties with neighbour amid tightening Western sanctions.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has arrived in Iraq on his first state trip abroad, in a bid to boost ties amid tightening Western sanctions.
Pezeshkian, a relative moderate who was elected in July, started his three-day visit as he met Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani on Wednesday. During the trip, the president and his delegation are due to sign a number of agreements and discuss the Gaza war and the situation in the Middle East with their Iraqi counterparts, Baghdad said.
The Iranian president visited a monument to Qassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran‘s elite Quds Force – a part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – who was killed in a 2020 attack by the United States in Baghdad.
High on Pezeshkian’s agenda will be Israel’s war on Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups around the region and complicated Iraq’s relations with the US.
Expanding trade ties is also one of Pezeshkian’s top goals, said Iraqi political scientist Ali al-Baidar, noting that Iran needs “the Iraqi market for its exports, just as it needs Iraq’s energy imports”.
