Iran's president to visit Iraq on first foreign trip

TEHRAN

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighboring Iraq on Sept. 11, state media reported on 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's premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran's ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.

The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.

He said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran's late president, Ebrahim Raisi.

But 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.

Since taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to "prioritize" strengthening ties with the Islamic Republic's neighbors.

Relations between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer over the past two decades.

Tehran is one of Iraq's leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.

In March 2023 the two countries signed a security agreement covering their common border.

Meanwhile, Ukraine on Sept. 7 warned Iran that selling ballistic missiles to Russia would have devastating effect on bilateral relations.

Commenting on media reports about Iran's alleged plans to sell ballistic missiles to Russia, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Ukraine has been suffering from Russian attacks for over two years.

According to media reports, a batch of 200 Iranian ballistic missiles has already arrived at an unspecified port on the Caspian Sea on Sept. 4.

The Iranian authorities have been consistently rejecting Ukraine's claims about supplying weapons to Russia.