Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan is visiting Iraq with a high-level US delegation this week to meet the country’s new president and the prime minister-designate in the first such visit since elections in May.

Why it matters: Sullivan, a seasoned bureaucrat, is getting to know Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul Mahdi and President Barham Salih for the first time while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is preoccupied with the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The visit is an opportunity to restructure the US relationship with Baghdad amid growing Iranian influence in the country.

Specifically, Sullivan’s visit could provide an opportunity to get the US-Iraq Strategic Framework, a document that lays out Washington’s ties with Baghdad, into more cohesive form after the deal got bogged down by six working groups.

“I think they’re kind of collapsing it down to focus on what’s important,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute who recently returned from a visit to Iraqi Kurdistan. “We tried to do broad-based work across a vast range of subjects and not much got done. Now they want to focus.” One option, Knights added, could be to narrow the working groups charged with implementing the pact into two lanes: Political-Military and Energy/Economic cooperation.