Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani will travel to Iran next Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to discuss the current military tension between the two countries in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to government sources in Baghdad.
The visit was confirmed by the Iranian Deputy Chief of Staff for Political Affairs, Mohamad Jamshidi, to the official IRNA news agency.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard deployed on Friday armored units and infantry on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan after denouncing «suspicious movements» of «Kurdish opposition» groups, less than 24 hours after Baghdad announced its own military movements in response to Iranian and Turkish attacks against positions of these groups in the region.
This visit, the first of the Iraqi prime minister to a non-Arab country after his coming to power in October, was finalized after yesterday’s meeting between Al Sudani and the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Mohamad Kazem Ale Sadeq.
It will discuss, along with the situation in Kurdistan, «the evolution of the diplomatic talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran», in which Iraq acts as a mediator», according to Iraqi government sources to the daily ‘Al Sharq’.
It should be recalled that Iran has for weeks been launching this series of cross-border missile and drone attacks on Kurdish-Iranian opposition groups, which it blames for fueling protests in its country over the death in custody of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, allegedly for wearing the traditional Islamic veil incorrectly.
Al Sudani will travel accompanied by a delegation headed by his National Security Advisor, Qasem al Araji, the sources conclude.
On the other hand, the Kurdish president, Nechirvan Barzani, has traveled to Baghdad on Sunday to meet with «several leaders and senior officials of the Iraqi government» in the framework of this crisis, according to the official Iraqi news agency, INA.
