TEHRAN: Iran鈥檚 President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighboring 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鈥檚 premier, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥減rioritize鈥� strengthening ties with the Islamic republic鈥檚 neighbors.
Relations between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer over the past two decades.
Tehran is one of Iraq鈥檚 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, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq鈥檚 north.
They have since agreed to disarm Iranian Kurdish rebel groups and remove them from border areas.
Tehran 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.
In January, Iran launched a deadly strike in northern Iraq鈥檚 autonomous Kurdistan region, saying it had targeted a site used by 鈥渟pies of the Zionist regime (Mossad).鈥�
On Saturday, an exiled Iranian Kurdish group said one of its activists, Behzad Khosrawi, had been arrested in Iraq鈥檚 northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to 鈥淚ranian intelligence.鈥�
Local Asayesh security forces said Khosrawi was arrested 鈥渂ecause he did not have residency鈥� in the Kurdish region, and denied he had any connection to 鈥減olitical activism.鈥�