In Baghdad, Iran’s Zarif seeks to sway Kadhimi before first foreign tour

BAGHDAD – Before Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi embarks next week on a crucial foreign tour, Tehran has dispatched its Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif to Baghdad.

Iran is seen as trying to win over Kadhimi with soft diplomacy as he prepares to leave for Tehran, Riyadh, and Washington.

According to experts, it wants to know how the Iraqi prime minister intends to curb the encroachment of Iranian-backed militias in Iraqi politics, and how Kadhimi wants to build balanced relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Political sources in Baghdad say that Zarif’s visit is particularly concerned with setting a date for Kadhimi’s visit to Tehran, which the Iranian regime wants it to take place before his visit to Saudi Arabia.

Baghdad has not yet formally announced Kadhimi’s intention to conduct official visits abroad, and no information has been provided on the time of these visits amid strong expectations that the Iraqi official will start his foreign tour with Riyadh first.

Iranian news agency IRNA, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had to retract information it had broadcast earlier, saying that Kadhimi will be visiting Tehran before Riyadh.

Iran is counting heavily on Kadhimi’s expected visit to Tehran next week to boost its chances for preferential treatment on the economic front, at a moment of very complex and intense international competition, even though the economic relationship between the two countries is heavily slanted in favour of Iran at present.

Kadhimi is about to embark on a visit to two geo-strategically-distant capitals, Riyadh and Tehran, within the same week, before heading to Washington. Observers say that the Iraqi prime minister must display great political acumen in order to reap substantial benefits from these marathon and contradictory visits.

Looking at the schedule of Kadhimi’s first foreign tour since taking office reveals the intensity of international competition to win over Iraq at this stage. It also highlights the current Iraqi perception of its most important capitals in the region and the world.

Kadhimi could not think of visiting Saudi Arabia without visiting Iran or vice versa, while the United States seems set to play the role of the cornerstone of Iraqi foreign policy. This is why Baghdad has chosen to combine them in the same tour within days of each other.

But, Iran seems much more eager than Saudi Arabia or the United States to receive Kadhimi, and perhaps even more than Iraq itself.

This Iranian eagerness is reflective of the scale of the challenge that Tehran faces as it notes that the new Iraqi prime minister is looking west, unlike most of his predecessors who used to underline their comfort with Iraq’s eastern neighbour, sometimes even excessively as did Nuri al-Maliki, for example, or to the point of total surrender, as done by Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Iranian diplomat Emir Mousavi seemed ecstatic talking about Kadhimi’s visit to Iran next week, stressing that it represents “an important development in bilateral relations,” and revealing that “economic and security cooperation will be among the priority items” on the agenda of Kadhimi’s visit.

Observers believe that Iran no longer has anything to offer the Iraqi government, after it decided to look at Iraq from the point of view of a group of armed militias whose leaders want to consolidate the concept of no-state.

Iran acknowledges the fact that trade with Iraq has been at its lowest levels recently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tehran fears that Iraq will turn to alternative trading partners in the region, which would also deal a massive blow to its political influence in Iraq.

Iraqi politicians say they have recently heard from their Iranian counterparts that “a strong, unified Iraq led by Kadhimi is better for Iran than an Iraq divided and dispersed.”

It is not clear at this moment whether such sentiments reflect the feeling of the hard-line Iranian leadership that controls Tehran’s decisions, or are merely an instance of the reform voices that come on from time to time, without having the slightest impact.

Commenting on Kadhimi’s upcoming foreign tour, former Tehran ambassador to Baghdad Hassan Danae Far said that “Kadhimi is working to find a balance in Iraq’s relations with Iran because both countries are neighbours, while Iran is also interested in strengthening its relations with Iraq in various fields and is working to diversify them, and we hope that these strong relations will continue to grow to reach the levels aspired to by both countries.”

Soft diplomatic language aside, it does not look like Iran intends to ease the pressure on Kadhimi in the matter of Iraq’s military relations with the United States.

This is confirmed by a recent statement issued by the Iraqi Al-Nujaba militia, a faction affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, regarding a “unified decision by the resistance forces (the militias of Iran) to confront American forces” in Iraq.

“The American forces in Iraq are occupation forces and their targeting by the resistance will escalate day by day,” said Nasr al-Shammari, deputy of Akram al-Kaabi, leader of al-Nujaba militia. He stressed that “the resistance is devising appropriate methods” to force the American forces out of Iraq, in reference to a recent series of attacks on the American Embassy in Baghdad and on Iraqi military bases where US troops are stationed.

“The resistance operations are secret and there is a unified decision by the resistance forces to confront the American forces,” al-Shammari added.

Al-Shammari believes that neither the Kadhimi government nor any other party “can prevent the resistance from targeting the Americans,” warning that “the Americans want to place their forces in areas where they believe the resistance will not be able to reach them,” in reference to the option available to the United States to transfer its military forces to Kurdish and Sunni areas inside Iraq.

Al-Shammari made these comments in the context of talking about the ongoing dialogue between Iraq and the United States to enhance relations between the two countries. His statements reinforce the prevailing perception among observers that Iran expresses its policy towards Iraq through its proxy militias that see themselves above the state, the government and the law, which kind of deflates all other official attempts to communicate between the two countries, including Kadhimi’s upcoming visit to Tehran.