First time in Baghdad: Iran's president to visit Iraq

Iran's president is making his first official visit to Iraq this week as he faces mounting pressure from hard-liners at home in the wake of the Trump administration's unraveling of the nuclear deal.

Hassan Rouhani's trip billed as "historic and noble" by his foreign minister is meant to solidify ties between Shiite power Iran and Iraq's Shiite led-government, a strong Tehran ally.

It is also Iran's response to President Donald Trump's snap December trip to Iraq and the American president's comments that U.S. forces should stay in Iraq to keep an eye on neighbouring Iran, with which Iraq shares a 1,400-kilometer-long (870 miles) border.

At the time, Trump slipped into Iraq at night, without stopping in Baghdad, to greet U.S. service members at a base far from the Iraqi capital where he extolled the American troops' fight against the Islamic State group.

Rouhani later mocked Trump's visit, asserting that flying into Iraq under the cover of darkness meant "defeat" for the U.S. in Iraq and asking the U.S. president why he didn't make an "open and official visit."
Zarif alluded to that on Sunday, saying that any country which tries to interfere with the good Iran-Iraq relations would "be deprived of opportunities for itself."