What Rouhani’s visit to Iraq tells us about Iran’s Syria policy

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s recent landmark trip to Iraq was closely monitored and discussed from various aspects by the media and analysts around the world. Some observers put their focus on the bilateral aspect, talking about the importance of the visit in terms of Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, while others analyzed it within the context of Iran’s plans to overcome the US sanctions. There have been also debates on the meaning of Rouhani’s trip for internal political divisions in Iran and Iraq.

But a largely ignored — and yet very important — aspect of the Iranian president’s three-day visit to Iraq is the explicit and implicit implications of the trip for Iran’s policy in Syria.

The first point in this regard is related to Iran’s plans for the process of Syria’s postwar reconstruction. After concluding a number of economic agreements and memorandums of understanding with the Syrian government over the past several months, it seems that Iran is moving forward with more concrete plan for playing an active role in Syria’s reconstruction.

One of the main agreements signed during Rouhani’s visit to Baghdad was on the construction of a railway connecting Iran’s Shalamcheh border crossing to Basra. This, in fact, is a part of Iran’s plan to establish a rail connection between its western borders and Syria, to be stretched toward Syria’s Mediterranean port of Latakia. The railway is defined within Tehran’s longer-term plan for achieving a central role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, acting as a transit hub between the East and the West. At the same time, some reports published during Rouhani’s visit to Iraq indicate that the Syrian government is going to hand over the management of the Latakia port’s container terminal to Iran. As such, Tehran is apparently speeding up its ambitious transit plan by simultaneously reaching out to the Syrian and Iraqi governments.