Tehran
\nIran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July.
\nPezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials.
\nThe visit comes at the invitation of Iraq\u2019s premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran\u2019s ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.
\nThe two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.
\nHe said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran\u2019s late president, Ebrahim Raisi.
\nBut Raisi was killed in May along with the then foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when their helicopter crashed on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.
\nSince taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to \u201cprioritise\u201d strengthening ties with the Islamic republic\u2019s neighbours.
\nRelations between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer over the past two decades.
\nTehran is one of Iraq\u2019s leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.
\nIn March 2023 the two countries signed a security agreement covering their common border, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq\u2019s north.
\nThey have since agreed to disarm Iranian Kurdish rebel groups and remove them from border areas.
\nTehran accuses the groups of importing arms from Iraq and of fomenting 2022 protests that erupted after the death in custody of Iranian-Kurd woman Mahsa Amini.
\nIn January, Iran launched a deadly strike in northern Iraq\u2019s autonomous Kurdistan region, saying it had targeted a site used by \u201cspies of the Zionist regime (Mossad)\u201d.
\nOn Saturday, an exiled Iranian Kurdish group said one of its activists, Behzad Khosrawi, had been arrested in Iraq\u2019s northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to \u201cIranian intelligence\u201d.
\nLocal Asayesh security forces said Khosrawi was arrested \u201cbecause he did not have residency\u201d in the Kurdish region, and denied he had any connection to \u201cpolitical activism\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tehran Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July. Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials. The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq\u2019s premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-430080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n