SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji on Saturday arrived in Sulaimani City, where he intends to follow up on security issues related to neighbouring Iran, his office said.
Araji’s visit to the Kurdish city of Sulaimani came in the light of instructions issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi armed forces, the office said.
The Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province shares an extensive border with Iran, where Tehran is concerned about the presence of armed Kurdish dissidents along the border.
Last March, Iraq and Iran signed a border security agreement, a move Iraqi officials said aimed primarily at tightening the frontier with Iraq’s Kurdish region.
The joint security agreement includes coordination in protecting the common borders between the two countries and consolidating cooperation in several security fields.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani signed the deal with Iraq’s Araji, in the presence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani.
Under the signed security deal, Iraq pledges it would not allow armed groups to use its territory in the Iraqi Kurdish region to launch any border-crossing attacks on neighbour Iran.
The frontier came into renewed focus last year when Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched missile and drone attacks against Iranian Kurdish groups based in the Kurdistan Region, accusing them of fomenting protests that were sparked by the death of an Iranian Kurdish woman while she was being held in police custody.
Iran has also accused Kurdish militants of working with its arch-enemy Israel and has often voiced concern over the alleged presence of the Israeli spy agency Mossad in the Kurdish region.
Last year, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said a sabotage team detained by its security forces were Kurdish militants working for Israel who planned to blow up a “sensitive” defence industry centre in the city of Isfahan.
