Baghdad won’t allow ‘robust’ relations with Tehran to be damaged: Iraq president

“We share a border with Iran with a length of 1,400 kilometers and our relations with Iran are good and robust and very important to us,” he said in a recent interview with the Saudi-run Al-Hadath channel.

Rashid stressed his country is against other parties using Iraq’s territory to hurt neighboring nations, underlining a recent security agreement between Iraq and Iran to deal with groups conducting anti-Iran operations from Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

“We are against any party using Iraqi and Kurdistan Region territories against any neighboring state. This is our clear policy,” he added.

Under the agreement signed in March, Iraq committed to relocating the anti-Iran groups to areas away from Iran borders and to disarming them.

The presence of Kurdish terrorist groups, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Komala, Kurdistan Free Life Party, and the Kurdistan Freedom Party, has been a source of tension between Iran and Iraq for years, with these groups often carrying out terrorist attacks on Iranian soil.

Following last year’s riots, triggered by the death of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, these groups intensified their subversive operations against Iran and smuggled weapons to their local agents.

That prompted Iran to push Iraq to put an end to terrorist activities of the anti-Iran groups, leading to the March agreement.

Iranian media reports say most of the agreement has now been implemented and efforts are underway to complete the process.