Relations with Iran Relations prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution Marked by mutual influences and conflicts, relations between Iraq and Iran are among the oldest between two neighboring civilizations. In the Sumerian Babylonian era, Iran was subject to the first Iraqi empires, and religions prior to monotheistic cults left a deep imprint there. The
border that currently separates Iraq and Iran as independent states measures 1,458 kilometers and was approved by the
Algiers Agreements signed in 1975. On 15 August 1990, Saddam Hussein, in turn diplomatically isolated following the invasion of Kuwait ten days earlier, renewed ties with Iran, and proposed to it the reapplication of the Algiers Agreement. Thus, between 2006 and 2016, annual trade exchanges between Iran and Iraq went from 1.6 billion to 18 billion dollars, with a trade balance largely favorable to Iran, making Iraq its "economic lung". In parallel, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Shiite-dominated governments favorable to Iran succeeded each other in Baghdad, creating the conditions for political rapprochement between the two countries. Of the six Iraqi Prime Ministers appointed between 2003 and 2020, three spent most of the 1980s in Iran, notably
Nouri al-Maliki who held this post for eight years from 2006 to 2014. and Iranian
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran in 2013.|alt=Two men sitting in discussion, one in suit, the other with white beard and turbanIn 2011, the gave Tehran access to Iraqi institutions, notably the intelligence services which previously worked with the Americans. Iran then has in Iraq eighteen offices and 5,700 rented accommodations to facilitate the work of Iranian intelligence agents. The Iranian general and commander of the Qods Forces
Qasem Soleimani personally directed offensives in several major battles of the conflict, notably during the
siege of Amirli (2014), the battles of
Tikrit (2014-2015).
Baiji (2014-2015), and
Fallujah (2016). (1957-2020).|alt=Man in military uniform with white beard facing forward At the end of the
second civil war in December 2017, the Iraqi government was again faced as after the
2003 war with the challenge of rebuilding the country and its economy, and further increased its economic dependence on Iran with which it multiplied trade agreements. On 11 March 2019, a year after the end of the civil war, Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani went to Baghdad for a three-day visit, during which agreements were concluded between Iran and Iraq in several fields: oil, trade, health, education, and transport with the construction of a
railway between
Shalamcheh in Iran and
Basra in Iraq. Their discussions focused on ways to strengthen trade ties, the fight against the
COVID-19 pandemic (while
Iran is one of the most affected countries), and on efforts to ensure regional stability. The Iranian representatives asked their Iraqi counterparts to expel US troops from their territory, calling their presence "detrimental", a year after the
elimination in Baghdad by an American strike of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and the leader of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias,
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. He was welcomed with great pomp in Tehran by Iranian President
Ebrahim Raisi as well as by Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, who had not received his predecessor Mustafa al-Kadhimi, deemed close to Washington and Riyadh during his two visits to Tehran. During this meeting, 14 memoranda of understanding were signed to strengthen cooperation between the two neighboring countries. (but not for gas, Iran being an indispensable supplier for Iraq Tehran has privileged links with
Iraqi Kurdistan (particularly with the "
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan"), which has several times manifested secessionist desires from Iraq. In September 2022, the
Guardians of the Revolution, the ideological army of the Iranian regime, bombarded northern Iraq accused of serving as a refuge for Iranian Kurdish separatist groups, in a context of
large-scale protests in Iran after the murder of a Kurdish civilian by Iran's
Guidance Patrol. If the armed Iranian opponents settled in northern Iraq do not take part in these protests, many protesters, on the other hand, cross the
Iraqi border to enlist in these organizations. In mid-July 2023, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior announced the deployment of a brigade at the border with Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a budget of more than seven million dollars, comprising some 50 surveillance towers and 40 cameras, to prevent infiltrations and smuggling. In January 2024, Iran again bombarded Iraqi Kurdistan in retaliation for the
attack in the Iranian city of Kerman claimed by the Islamic State which killed 84 people the previous week. These Iranian strikes killed at least 4 people in Erbil, including a Kurdish businessman close to Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. This attack aroused anger in Iraq, even among Shiites who are ordinarily rather aligned with the Islamic Republic. After
World War II, the two states were close allies, having notably been part of the
Baghdad Pact in force between 1955 and 1978 (although Iraq withdrew in 1959). The
Kirkuk–Ceyhan Oil Pipeline, put into service in 1977 to bypass a Syrian attempt to embargo its oil exports, allowed Iraq in 2014 to deliver up to 400,000 barrels of oil per day via Turkey, or a quarter of its oil exports. After the second Iraqi civil war (2013-2017), Iraq decided to build a second pipeline to the Turkish port of
Ceyhan (from
Baiji), due to damage caused by the Islamic State on the first. In 1991,
Resolution 687 of the United Nations Security Council ended the Gulf War and opened the way to the autonomy of
Iraqi Kurdistan, which became a refuge for the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) against which the Turkish government has been at
war since the beginning of the 1980s. In April 2009, the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr was in turn received by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Between 2014 and 2018, Turkey closed its consulate in Mosul because of the taking hostage of its diplomats in this city by the Islamic State group. In March 2023, Iraqi Prime Minister
Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani went to Ankara where he met Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the drought in Iraq and the sharing of the waters of the rivers
Tigris and
Euphrates which both take their source in Turkey. While Baghdad regularly accuses Turkey of reducing the flow of waterways to Iraq because of dams built upstream, the Turkish president promised him to release more water into the Tigris. This Turkish decision was taken at the request of Iraq to force the Kurdish authorities to negotiate with the Iraqi government. In August 2023, Turkish Foreign Minister
Hakan Fidan went to Baghdad where he met his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein. The files discussed between the two men are the distribution of the waters of the
Tigris and
Euphrates, the resumption of exports of oil from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey, and the fight against PKK bases, fought by Turkey in northern Iraq, even if Hakan Fidan declared on this subject "our common enemy must not poison our bilateral relations". A delegation of high Turkish officials accompanied him for bilateral exchanges on the themes of security and energy. His visit focused on economic and security discussions, notably on the fight against the PKK in northern Iraq and the sharing of the waters of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (which take their source in Turkey before crossing Iraqi territory.
Turkish expansionism on Iraq The former Ottoman domination over the current territory of Iraq explains regularly affirmed expansionist desires by the various Turkish governments on northern Iraq. The Iraqi city of
Mosul is particularly the object of these territorial claims, notably: in 1925, the vote of the
League of Nations which attached the
Mosul vilayet to Iraq rather than to Turkey was immediately contested by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (first president of the Republic of Turkey), then his successors; in 1990, at the time of the
invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, Turkey member of the
international military coalition against Saddam Hussein tried to take advantage to annex the regions of
Mosul and
Kirkuk, but Washington opposed it; rejected by Iraqi Prime Minister
Haider al-Abadi, who assimilated such an intervention to an "occupation" of Iraqi territory. Furthermore, a contestation of the borders delimiting the states resulting from the Ottoman Empire also exists on the side of Iraq, which has claimed several times its sovereignty over Kuwait (1937, 1961, and 1990) because the latter was part of the
Basra Vilayet.
Incursions of the Turkish army in northern Iraq In 2003, although opposed to the Iraq War, Turkey took advantage of the weakening of the Iraqi government to conduct targeted interventions against the PKK in northern Iraq. When the second Iraqi civil war broke out, the PKK played a decisive role in the fight against the Islamic State in northern Iraq, notably by coming to the aid of the
Yazidis minorities, massacred and enslaved by the jihadists in the region of
Sinjar. In January 2019, Iraqi protesters attacked a Turkish army base in Shiladze, in western Iraqi Kurdistan, which they accused of having killed four civilians in a bombing. A note of protest was handed to the Turkish ambassador denouncing repeated bombings in Iraq and a "violation of its sovereignty". Following this incident, Baghdad solicited the diplomatic support of the
Arab League to obtain the withdrawal of Turkish troops from its territory, without success. Several Turkish soldiers were killed during this operation. According to Iraqi sources, Turkey possessed in 2022 a hundred military support points in Kurdistan, with the presence of a permanent contingent of at least 4,000 soldiers. The Iraqi government and that of the autonomous region of
Iraqi Kurdistan are regularly accused of ambivalence in tolerating Turkish military operations in order to preserve their close economic ties with Ankara. In July, the Iraqi government denounced new incursions by the Turkish army in Iraqi Kurdistan after a resurgence of Ankara's military operations against the PKK. In August 2024, Turkey announced a military cooperation agreement with Iraq with the installation of joint command and training centers against PKK fighters.
Relations with Jordan Iraq and Jordan are separated by a
border of 181 kilometers, the two countries having previously been part of the Ottoman Empire until its dismantling after the First World War, before becoming British protectorates, the
British Mandate for Mesopotamia and the
Emirate of Transjordan, and finally gradually obtaining their independence (proclaimed in 1946 for Jordan). On 14 February 1958, King
Faisal II of Iraq and his cousin King
Hussein of Jordan, decided to unite their two kingdoms into a single state, the
Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan, but it was dissolved five months later after the
revolution which ended the Iraqi monarchy. Under Saddam Hussein's regime, tens of thousands of Jordanian students obtained degrees in Iraqi universities thanks to scholarships offered by Iraq. In February 1990, Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein went to Amman, where he was welcomed by the king. A few months later, at the beginning of the Gulf War, King Hussein declared in his address to the nation that the Western intervention was against "all Arabs and all Muslims" and evoked objectives aiming to "destroy Iraq and reorganize the area in a more dangerous way for our people than the Sykes-Picot agreements". His rhetoric was essentially populist addressed to his Jordanian population of Palestinian origin largely supportive of Saddam Hussein and economically interested due to Jordan's dependence on Iraqi oil. the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad was targeted by a
car bomb attack. As for the Jordanian population, the years following the fall and execution of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator continued to arouse the admiration of many Jordanians, who saw in him a hero of the Arab and Palestinian causes. and conducting a series of airstrikes notably after the execution of one of its pilots by the jihadist group. In August 2017, Jordan and Iraq announced the reopening of their only border post closed since 2014, after securing the road linking their two capitals. King Abdullah II went again to Baghdad in January 2019 to improve economic and energy cooperation between the two countries. King Abdullah II went for the third time to Baghdad on 27 June 2021, in the framework of a tripartite summit between Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, on political and economic cooperation, investments, and the fight against terrorism. Several cooperation agreements were thus signed in the sectors of energy, health and education, while Baghdad renewed its oil supply contract to Egypt of 12 million barrels in 2021, and plans to build an oil pipeline aiming to export 1 million barrels per day of crude from the Iraqi city of
Basra to the Jordanian port of
Aqaba. In December 2022, Amman hosted the second international Baghdad conference aimed at supporting Iraq and promoting dialogue between countries in the region. Its route is defined by the
Uqair agreements of 1922-1923. But two years later, ruined by its military expenditures and accusing Kuwait, one of its main creditors of having stolen oil from it by
horizontal drilling, Saddam Hussein decided to invade the small Emirate. After a series of unsuccessful international negotiations, the
United States declared war on Iraq in January 1991. On 15 March 1991, the Emir of Kuwait,
Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, returned to the country after having spent more than 8 months in exile. Early 1993, Saddam Hussein again led incursions into Kuwait and installed missiles in the no-fly zone, provoking the response of the United States (air raids in the south on 13 January 1993 and against Baghdad on 17 January 1993), before finally officially recognizing Kuwait in November 1994. In retaliation, the jihadist group committed a
bomb attack against a Shiite mosque in Kuwait in 2015. In 2018, after the end of the civil war, a strong sign of rapprochement between the two states, Kuwait was the host of an international conference on the reconstruction of Iraq. The following year, a project for electrical interconnection between Kuwait and Iraq was signed with the
Gulf Cooperation Council, but this project struggled to materialize. The Iraqi government officially declared having finished paying the indemnities due to Kuwait on 23 December 2021. The two countries have however still not delimited their maritime borders while the file of missing Kuwaitis remains open. In July 2023, the head of Kuwaiti diplomacy Salem Al-Sabah went to Baghdad where he met his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, for a meeting focused on "the resolution of border issues". The two countries were part of the
Ottoman Empire before its dismantling after
World War I, and the
border that separates them was drawn by the
Sykes–Picot Agreement in 1916. and of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, but Syria was suspended from these two organizations in 2011 and 2012 due to the repression of the regime which led to the
Syrian civil war. and the Syrian founder of the Ba'ath Party Michel Aflaq, in 1968 The two states participated in the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, but their interests became divergent in the following years when Syria got closer to Nasser's Egypt, while Iraq was governed by a pro-British monarchy. Paradoxically, this takeover by the same party in two neighboring countries contributed to strongly deteriorating their relations, each being governed by two rival branches of the party, to which was added a religious rivalry between the Sunni regime of Baghdad and the
Alawite regime of Damascus. Indeed, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Syrian government delivered weapons to Tehran, and closed the
pipeline connecting Kirkuk to the Syrian port of Baniyas, with limited consequences for Iraq thanks to the commissioning of the
Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in 1977. In 2011, Baghdad abstained during the vote that led to the suspension of Damascus from the
Arab League, due to the repression of the regime of the Syrian revolution. Baghdad was also one of the few Arab capitals to keep its embassy in Damascus. while like the Lebanese
Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias fought alongside the Syrian army. But Iraqi involvement in the
Syrian civil war was not limited to the
war against the Islamic State, Iraqi Shiite militias also actively participating in the regime's repression against the rebels, notably during the
Battle of Aleppo. In parallel, Iraq hosted between 2011 and 2021 approximately 250,000 Syrian refugees who fled the civil war, mainly in
refugee camps located in Iraqi Kurdistan. In October 2018, the border post located between the cities of Iraq and Syria
Bukamal, and
Al-Qa'im was reopened following the recapture of these two cities from the Islamic State by the Iraqi and Syrian armies. This post constituted before the outbreak of the war in Syria in 2011 one of the strategic arteries for the passage of goods, tourists and labor. which was officially reintegrated on 7 May 2023, and participated in the
league summit in Jeddah on 19 May. The following month, Syrian Foreign Minister
Faisal Mekdad went to Baghdad and met his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein to discuss strengthening Syrian-Iraqi cooperation in humanitarian aid and the fight against drug trafficking. and called his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supporter of HTS, to affirm to him that "Iraq will not be a mere spectator of the serious repercussions of the events taking place in Syria". Following his arrival in power, he addressed in a video the Iraqi Prime Minister and assured him of his desire to establish renewed political and economic relations with Iraq.
Relations with Lebanon Iraq and Lebanon are both members and founders of the Arab League, (right) during the
Arab League summit in Baghdad in 1978. During the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, Iraq and Lebanon both participated in the Arab coalitions formed against Israel although Lebanese participation was much lower than that of the other Arab armies. In 1990, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad sided with Washington in the Gulf War, and received in return the American green light to take control of Lebanon. During the second Iraqi civil war (2013-2017), the Lebanese
Hezbollah participated in the conflict in the camp loyal to the Iraqi government, alongside the other Shiite militias supported by Iran. In February 2018,
Michel Aoun went to Baghdad as President of the Lebanese Republic (a year after his
election in October 2016) marking the first visit to Iraq by a Lebanese head of state in office for decades. More than 15,000 Lebanese live in Iraq, including about 5,000 in Iraqi Kurdistan, while many Shiite Lebanese go each year to Iraq, to the holy places of
Najaf and the city of
Karbala. In 2021, about 900 Lebanese companies are established in Iraq, mainly in the fields of tourism, catering or health. and of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The Saudi royal family, wishing to forge an alliance with Iraq against Iran, then the main military power in the Middle East, decided to receive Saddam Hussein on an official visit during the summer of 1980, marking the first visit of an Iraqi president to the kingdom. After having been absent from the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein, which created a void filled by Iran, Saudi Arabia turned again towards Baghdad, But he was recalled a few months later for controversial remarks on the action of Shiite militias Hashd al-Shaabi in the fighting against the jihadists of the Islamic State in Sunni areas. In August 2017, Saudi Arabia and Iraq announced their decision to reopen the Arar border crossing, in northern Saudi Arabia, closed since the Gulf War, to facilitate trade. In April 2018, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to offer a football stadium to Iraq, built in Baghdad, with a capacity of 100,000 spectators. In April 2019, diplomatic relations officially resumed between the two countries with the inauguration of two Saudi consulates in Baghdad and in
Najaf, an important place of pilgrimage for the Shiite community. The same year, the Iraqi Prime Minister,
Adil Abdul-Mahdi went to Saudi Arabia and concluded thirteen political and economic agreements. , Iraqi Prime Minister from 2018 to 2020 On 7 May 2020, the arrival at the post of Prime Minister of
Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, pro-American, was however favorably perceived by the Saudi monarchy, itself maintaining very strong bilateral relations with Washington. The new Iraqi government affirmed, in a nationalist speech, wanting to replace Iraq in its Arab environment in coherence with its majority population. In April 2024, Saudi Arabia and Iraq announced the opening of a direct airline between the cities of
Dammam, in the east of the Saudi kingdom where its minority Shiite community is concentrated, and Najaf, Shiite holy city south of Baghdad. The following month, the Saudi ambassador to Iraq, Abdulaziz al-Shammari, met the governor of
Karbala province Nassif al-Khattabi in the city of
Karbala, also a Shiite holy city.
Relations with the United Arab Emirates Iraq and the United Arab Emirates are both members of the Arab League, The same year, the United Arab Emirates appointed an ambassador to Baghdad, Abdullah Ibrahim al-Shehi, while most Arab countries had withdrawn their diplomatic staff from the Iraqi capital due to insecurity. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates also integrated the international coalition formed against the Islamic State by carrying out airstrikes and hosting French planes on their soil. The Emirates nevertheless decided to suspend their participation in airstrikes following the execution of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State. In September 2018, UNESCO launched an initiative aimed at gathering funds to rebuild the Iraqi city of
Mosul, largely destroyed during its
liberation by the Iraqi army in 2016-2017. Four months later, out of the 100 million dollars raised for this initiative, more than half came from a donation of 50.4 million dollars from the United Arab Emirates. In 2023, Abu Dhabi committed to investing 500 million dollars in a hydraulic project in
Sinjar. Thus, their simultaneous proximity with Iran, the Arab Gulf countries, and Western countries (since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) creates natural affinities between Baghdad and Doha. Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, Qatar participated in the coalition formed against Iraq during the Gulf War; but did not take sides in the Iran-Iraq Wars, nor in the 2003 Iraq War. In June 2023, Qatar unveiled an investment plan of 5 billion dollars, in addition to the 9.5 billion dollars of agreements that private Qatari companies signed in the construction of two power plants in the country.
Relations with Oman Oman's diplomatic opening at the beginning of the 1970s was coldly received by Iraq, which reproached the sultanate for its proximity to Great Britain, former colonial power from which Iraq freed itself like Egypt
in the late 1950s. The Sultanate nevertheless integrated the organization that year, On 12 May 2019, Oman announced the reopening of its embassy in Baghdad, closed since 1990.
Relations with Yemen Iraq and Yemen are both members of the Arab League, Its president
Ali Abdullah Saleh provided diplomatic and military support to Saddam Hussein, but nevertheless attempted, unsuccessfully to convince him to evacuate Kuwait in order to avoid war. The following years, Yemen was torn by a series of civil wars
in 1994 then in the
2010s, during which, like Iraq, Sunni extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State
attempted to establish themselves and committed numerous attacks. In July 2023, Iraqi Foreign Minister
Fuad Hussein received his Yemeni counterpart
Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak, to whom he proposed his help, as mediator, to end the
Yemeni civil war ongoing since 2015. In April 2025, the Iraqi government committed to preventing any non-civilian activity of the
Houthis in power in Yemen on its territory, after having welcomed the latter in the framework of the "
Axis of Resistance" led by Iran. This decision was taken under the influence of Washington which feared that the Houthis would launch attacks against its bases in Iraq in retaliation for the
American strikes targeting their forces in Yemen. This agreement aims to secure imports of this hydrocarbon crucial for Iraqi power plants. Armenia and Iraq established relations when Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992. Armenia opened an embassy in
Baghdad in 2000 and Iraq opened its in
Yerevan a year later. In 2003, Armenia opposed the
American invasion of Iraq, but sent troops to help the American mission in the country. In the 2010s, Iraq was one of Armenia's most important trading partners. In 2016, trade between these two countries amounted to more than 140 million dollars, while trade between these two countries increased by 30%. In February 2021, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister
Artak Apitonian and his Iraqi counterpart Nizar Khairallah met in
Baghdad, and signed an agreement allowing visa-free entry for diplomatic personnel, as well as a memorandum of understanding on political consultations between the two countries During his visit to Iraq, Artak Apitonyan also met Iraqi Minister of Agriculture Mohammed al-Khafaji, the president of the Armenian-Iraqi Intergovernmental Commission Rehan Hanna Ayoubi, and the primate of the Armenian Apostolic Diocese in Iraq, Archbishop Avak Assadourian. Their presence dates back to the 6th century BC, when the prophet of Judaism
Ezekiel followed his people into exile in
Babylon after the conquest of the
Kingdom of Judah (which corresponds to the current territory of Israel) by
Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BC. This agreement was to initiate Judeo-Arab cooperation for the development of a Jewish national home in the State of Palestine (passed under the control of the United Kingdom) and of an Arab nation over most of the Middle East. But this
Arab nation never saw the light of day, the territories taken by the allies from the Ottoman Empire being divided into zones under the control of the French and British (who placed
Faisal I at the head of their protectorate over Iraq); the
1919 Faisal-Weizmann agreement thus remained a dead letter. In October 1947, it was therefore against the will of the Arab populations and neighboring countries that the UN voted the
partition plan for Palestine, providing for the creation of the state of Israel, officially founded in May 1948. In parallel, Israeli Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion, in search of non-Arab "peripheral allies" in the Middle East (for which he got closer to Iran and Turkey), took interest in the
Kurds of Iraq, opposed to the central government. (right, facing) received in Israel (date unknown).|alt=Group of men standing, in uniform or suit on an air base Iraq participated in the Arab-Israeli wars of the
Six Days in June 1967, then and the
Kippur in October 1973. Since these two conflicts, unlike Egypt and Jordan which made peace with Israel in 1978 and 1994, Iraq, like Syria, refused to recognize Israel. For its part, Israel attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear research reactor
Osirak under construction, during
Operation Opera in 1981. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, despite a reversal of Iraqi foreign policy marked by a rapprochement with several former enemies of Iraq such as the United States, Iran and Syria, Israeli-Iraqi relations remain at a standstill. This contact attracted the attention of the
Financial Times whose investigation revealed in 2015 the oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan to Israel (via the
pipeline connecting Kirkuk to Ceyhan, from where the oil is transported by
tankers to the port of
Haifa).
Relations with Palestine In May 2025, Baghdad hosted an international summit in support of the Gaza Strip bombed by the Israeli army, providing for a fund of 50 billion dollars intended for the reconstruction of the Palestinian territory. == Relations with European and Western countries ==