Shafaq News

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi traveled to Tehran on Thursday for a one-day visit that produced railway agreements, a twinning arrangement between the two capitals, and a commitment to draft a comprehensive strategic document. The substance of the visit lay in what was not signed: an Iraqi bid to broker between Washington and Tehran at a moment when both appear willing to let Baghdad try.

The initiative is Baghdad's own, and it carries real exposure. Iraq hosts US troops under a bilateral security arrangement while sharing a 1,400-kilometer border and deep economic ties with Iran. Any escalation between the two would be fought, in part, on Iraqi territory and paid for out of Iraqi oil revenue. Al-Zaidi's assurance in Tehran that Iraqi soil would not be used to launch threats against Iran was directed as much at his domestic audience as at his hosts, a reiteration of sovereignty framed as reassurance.

Tehran was al-Zaidi's second foreign stop after Washington, where the agenda was economic: investment, energy, and the conversion of a relationship long defined by counterterrorism cooperation into something commercial. Arriving in Tehran directly afterward signals a choreography that neither capital objected to.

Hassan Fadaam, a leader in the Hikma Movement led by Ammar al-Hakim, reads the two trips as a single policy. Baghdad's foreign posture, he told Shafaq News, is driven first by the need for a stable environment in which investment can occur. “The projects discussed in Washington require security and political predictability; de-escalating US-Iranian friction is not altruism but a precondition for the domestic economic agenda.”

International relations professor Salih al-Shathir situates the visit in a wider regional realignment. An Arab regional order is taking shape, he told Shafaq News, and Iraq will hold a significant place in it. He points to the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement —the accord governing US-Iraqi relations beyond the military domain— as one half of Baghdad's credentials, and its historical relationship with Tehran as the other. “The combination makes Iraq acceptable to both parties in a way no other regional capital currently is.”

Read more: Iraq's mediation bid between Washington and Tehran

What Baghdad would carry into such a channel is already specified. Al-Shathir describes the visit as delivering reassurance to Tehran that a return to negotiations with Washington remains possible, covering the earlier agreements, the nuclear program, and ballistic missiles, or, failing that, a ceasefire under which contested files could be discussed.

That acceptability is being tested against a crowded and unforgiving agenda.

Iran affairs specialist Mahdi Azizi told Shafaq News that talk of an Iraqi mediating role predates the visit itself, circulating in both Iranian and American media. Washington, he argues, wanted al-Zaidi to carry the role of intermediary “to return the two sides to a negotiating table they left.” Iraq's motives are direct, because disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a substantial share of regional crude transits, would strike Iraqi oil exports immediately.

The most sensitive file, by Azizi's account, is armed factions. Washington has pressed Baghdad to consolidate weapons under exclusive state authority, and part of the Tehran discussions may have addressed whether Iran can be induced to move factions that have refused disarmament. This is where mediation stops being a matter of message-carrying and becomes a question of leverage over actors that are simultaneously Iraqi political parties, security formations, and instruments of Iranian regional policy.

Read more: Iraq's September 30 weapons deadline leaves terms of disarmament unresolved

Independent politician Abu Mithaq al-Masari frames the initiative more modestly, as containment rather than breakthrough. A significant portion of the visit, he told Shafaq News, was devoted to cooling friction between the American and Iranian sides, deferring some contested points, freezing others, in the hope that a lowered temperature opens space for understandings later.

“Returning to the memorandum previously signed between the two parties is itself a worthwhile objective, if it spares the region, and Iraq in particular, the consequences of a military confrontation,” he said.

Ashraf Akkeh, an international relations expert based in Ramallah, does not believe a single prime ministerial visit can keep Iraq or the region from sliding toward a broader confrontation. What is under way, “is not the familiar Iranian-American dispute but a redrawing of influence and geopolitical and economic balances across the region,” a process into which bilateral diplomacy has limited entry.

His second point is that Iraq's political forces and armed factions do not share a common position on the relationship with the United States, and any foreign policy lacking internal consensus will fail regardless of the skill behind it. A prime minister's capacity to strike a genuine external balance depends on a domestic dialogue capable of managing Iraqi divisions over war and regional alignments. No such dialogue currently exists in institutional form.

The deliverables of the visit mark the ceiling of what the initiative has so far achieved. The joint statement committed the two governments to preparing a comprehensive strategic document spanning political, economic, cultural, and security cooperation, and to expanding trade, investment, energy, transit, industry, and agriculture.

The concrete items are infrastructural: an international freight and transport agreement, a memorandum on rail connectivity running from Kermanshah through Khosravi and Khanaqin to Baghdad, and the twinning arrangement between the capitals. The statement also covered drought, dust storms, and water resource management, alongside security coordination against terrorism, organized crime, and smuggling.

Read more: PM Al-Zaidi heads to Tehran with US-Iran dialogue proposal

Rail connectivity is the clearest expression of what Baghdad is actually attempting, which is less mediation than repositioning. A country that functions as a trade corridor is harder to treat as a battlefield.

Whether that logic holds is the open question. Iraq's leverage in any US-Iran channel derives precisely from its vulnerability to both, the same exposure that would make failure expensive. Al-Zaidi returns to Baghdad having demonstrated that both capitals will receive him. Neither has yet demonstrated that it will concede anything to him.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.