Setting sights on $50b trade target with Iraq
By Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh
Mideast affairs expert
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s choice of Iraq as his first foreign visit destination is defensible from political, cultural, and economic perspectives. However, among the various fields for potential bilateral cooperation, I want to zero in on economic collaboration as the real standout in this piece. Although security strategies still hold sway along the Iran-Iraq border, the frontier is still Iran’s most lucrative border, thanks to the political and cultural affinities between the two neighbors.
Based on my 12-year experience in Iraqi affairs, I believe that if security considerations step aside and make way for developmental ones at the border, Tehran-Baghdad trade capacities can reach $50 billion annually. However, unfortunately, security considerations have sometimes stopped or postponed some important economic projects or even removed them from the agenda.
If the authorities of Iran and Iraq do not get a move on and put these economic agreements into action pronto, border trade will fall into the hands of middlemen and mafias.
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