ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is set to visit Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported on Sunday, marking his first foreign visit since taking office in July.
Pezeshkian’s agenda includes bilateral meetings with senior Iraqi officials and the signing of cooperation agreements and security memoranda, according to Iran’s state IRNA news agency.
Iran’s Ambassador to Baghdad Mohammed Kazem Al-e Sadeq told IRNA in late August that Pezeshkian will visit Iraq on an official invitation from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani.
“Iraq is an important country in the region and it is of interest from the perspective of Pezeshkian's foreign policy, as [the Iranian president] announced that his foreign policy is based on the importance of neighboring countries," Sadeq told Rudaw on Friday.
The visit “will be crowned with the signing of memoranda of understanding that serve the interests of both countries,” he added. “There are also memoranda of understanding regarding the security dossier.”
Pezeshkian will also visit Erbil during the trip, according to Nazim Dabbagh, the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) office in Tehran.
“The Iranian foreign ministry has informed us that during his trip to Iraq, Masoud Pezeshkian will also visit Erbil,” Dabbagh told Rudaw.
The agreements between the two sides were supposed to be signed during a trip that was planned for the late president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May, Sadeq said at the time.
This will be Pezeshkian’s first trip abroad and first to Iraq as president after winning in Iran’s snap presidential election in July. The invitation was issued during a phone call between the two leaders days after Pezeshkian’s triumph in the vote.
Iran and Iraq have several economic and security agreements. They also signed a security pact in March 2023 that saw Baghdad agree to disarm Kurdish opposition groups and secure the border regions. Iran had threatened to use military action if Baghdad failed to fulfill the agreement.
Two weeks before Raisi’s death, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani traveled to Iran, normalizing ties that were harmed after Iran attacked the Kurdish capital with ballistic missiles in January.
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