Russia consolidating its position in Iraq amid anti-Iran sanctions

A top-level meeting of the Russian-Iraqi Intergovernmental Commission for Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was held in Baghdad on April 24 and 25. It produced 16 bilateral agreements and memos of understanding in telecommunications, trade, energy, electric power, manufacturing, information technology, transport and banking.

Yury Borisov, who headed the Russian delegation, traveled to Baghdad shortly after his April 20 Damascus visit. In Syria, the Russian deputy prime minister discussed the ways of reviving the country’s economy with President Bashar al-Assad and sealed Russia’s 49-year lease of the seaport of Tartus for economic uses. In 2017, Moscow and Damascus signed an agreement on the deployment of a Russian navy logistics support center in Tartus.

"A key issue that is to yield positive dynamics is the one on the use of the port of Tartus. My visit has cemented all these agreements. We have made a considerable progress on that matter and hope that a contract will be signed within a week and the port of Tartus will be used by Russian businesses for 49 years," Tass reported Borisov as saying.

The economic recovery of the Syrian-Iraqi crisis zone received less coverage, but the fact that the issue is in the hands of a high-ranking official — Borisov is a former deputy minister of defense — speaks volumes about Moscow’s attitude toward the Arab Mashriq, which extends from the western border of Egypt to the eastern border of Iraq.