Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to visit Baghdad

BAGHDAD — Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will lead a senior delegation to Iraq on Wednesday for talks on regional developments and what Tehran’s Tasnim news agency called strategic cooperation between the two countries.

The visit comes as Baghdad moves toward its Sept. 30 deadline for bringing all weapons under state control, a policy the Iran-aligned factions refusing to take part have rejected while U.S. forces remain. Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Mohammad Kazem Al-e Sadegh, called on the government in late June to listen to the concerns of those factions, saying authorities should weigh “the reasons that drive armed factions in Iraq to want to retain their weapons.”

It also follows Monday’s drone strike on the Kurdistan Region prime minister’s office, which the KRG’s counter-terrorism directorate said was launched from the Iranian side of the border and which Masrour Barzani attributed to Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the strike a terrorist act in a call with his Iraqi counterpart.