Iran has nominated a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to serve as its ambassador to Baghdad, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry source told MBN on Monday.
Tehran has selected Brig. Gen. Abdolreza Meskarian, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The person did not specify when Meskarian would assume his duties in Baghdad.
The move comes more than four years after current ambassador Mohammad Kazem al-Sadeq took up his post in Baghdad. No official announcement has been made regarding the end of his tenure or the reasons for his replacement. Neither the Iraqi nor Iranian foreign ministry has issued an official statement.
Meskarian heads the IRGC’s Ramadan Headquarters, a unit responsible for overseeing Iran’s proxy forces in Iraq. His responsibilities have included coordinating with Iraqi Shiite armed factions, according to United Against Nuclear Iran. He previously served as the official responsible for security coordination between Iran and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
The United States designates the IRGC, its Quds Force and key Iraqi armed factions aligned with Tehran as terrorist organizations.
Since 2003, Tehran has routinely nominated serving or former IRGC commanders to serve as Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad. Among the most prominent was Iraj Masjedi, the predecessor to the current envoy. Masjedi is under U.S. sanctions and previously served as an adviser to Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander killed in a U.S. strike near Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.
The United States has intensified pressure on the Iraqi government in recent months to distance the country from Iran and curb the influence of Iraqi armed groups linked to Tehran. Several of those factions have claimed responsibility for dozens of drone and missile attacks targeting U.S. interests in Iraq and elsewhere in the region since the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began in February.
The nomination comes amid tensions between Iran and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi over the closure of the al-Shaib border crossing in Iraq’s southern province of Maysan on Oct. 21. Iraqi government sources told MBN last week that al-Sadeq, the current ambassador to Baghdad, had been pushing tribal leaders to pressure Iraq’s political leadership to reopen the crossing.
It is not the first time Iraq has shut down border crossing points with Iran. In September, Iraqi authorities closed al-Shaib in addition to the Shalamcheh crossing in Basra province and the Mandali crossing in Diyala after an attack on a pipeline carrying oil from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province to its western coast. Riyadh said the attack had originated from inside Iraqi territory.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
