Iraq's PM & Iran President strengthen cooperation

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani called a visit Tuesday by the new prime minister of Iraq, where the US military has a presence, "a turning point" in the countries' relations and vowed to continue supporting the neighbouring Arab nation.Mustafa al-Kadhimi arrived on his first official visit abroad since taking office more than two months ago, Iranian media reported.State television showed footage of al-Kadhimi landing at Tehran's Mehrabad airport.The TV outlet said al-Khadhimi would meet top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Rouhani.

The official website of the office of the Iranian presidency later released a photo of Rouhani and al-Kadhimi at a welcome ceremony in Tehran, showing both wearing protective face masks to help prevent spread of the coronavirus.Iran sees the US military presence in Iraq a threat to Tehran.The visit came after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif travelled to Baghdad over the weekend.

It was Zarif's first visit to Iraq since a US airstrike in January killed a top Iranian general, Qassim Soleimani, outside Baghdad's international airport.The strike catapulted Iraq to the brink of a US-Iran proxy war that could have destabilised the Middle East.In Tehran, al-Kadhimi said Iraq's foreign policy is based on "balance and avoiding any alignment."

The Iraqi premier said his country seeks to improve relations with Iran "based on non-intervention in domestic affairs of the two countries."A former intelligence chief backed by Washington, al-Kadhimi took office in May after he had played a significant part for years in the war against the Islamic State group, which was declared defeated in Iraq in 2017.

Iran sees Iraq as a possible route to bypass US sanctions that President Donald Trump re-imposed on Tehran in 2018, after pulling America out of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.Last year, Iran's exports to Iraq amounted to nearly 9 billion US dollars, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.It said the two nations will discuss increasing that amount to 20 billion US dollars.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, religious tourism between Iraq and Iran has stopped.Before the pandemic, some 5 million tourists — bringing in nearly 5 billion US dollars a year — visited Shiite holy sites in the two countries.Under former dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq waged an eight-year war in the 1980s against Iran, a conflict that left nearly 1 million killed on both sides.

(Image Credit: AP)