BAGHDAD — Iran's new foreign minister arrived in Iraq on Sunday on his first trip abroad since taking office, underscoring the growing links between the two Shiite-led neighbors. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was met at Baghdad International Airport by his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari. He is also meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the parliament speaker, Osama Al-Nujaifi, in a visit likely to focus on the civil war raging across Iraq's border in Syria. “We have joint concerns with our Iraqi brothers on war-waging in the region,” the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Zarif as saying before his departure. That is an apparent reference to US-led plans for strikes on Iran's ally Syria. Iran and Iraq fought a ruinous war from 1980 to 1988. The two countries have bolstered ties considerably since the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians annually now visit Shiite sites in Iraq despite ongoing security risks, and Iraq is a major market for Iranian products. Iran has been increasingly cut off from the world's financial system following multiple rounds of sanctions over its disputed nuclear program. The Iraqi market offers it an important source of hard currency. The Western-educated Zarif is the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit Iraq since President Hasan Rohani came to office last month. Rohani is seen as more moderate than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who paid a farewell visit to Baghdad and the Iraqi Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in July. An earlier visit by Ahmadinejad in 2008 was the first by an Iranian president since Iran's 1979 revolution. – AP
