Some Agreements with Neighboring Countries regarding Iranian Borders – Protecting borders of nation becomes necessary. Borders often have security issues that lead to some serious problems in a country. Thus, there are always tight securities on border that connect neighboring countries and military army is stationed on the border to maintain the security and protection. All countries mostly do the same efforts and Iran is one of them. Iran is nation that shares some common borders with some countries. Thus, these countries commonly have agreement to prevent any issues that can involve the connected countries. Iranian government has made some official agreement as response to certain issues on the border.
One of them is the recent border security agreement between Iran and Iraq. Iranian government initiated discussion to make official agreement between these two countries and the agreement was signed on March 19, 2023. There was serious issue that made Iranian government to initiate and establish agreement with the Iraqi government. The issue was related to Kurdish armed group. The group posed security threats to area of Iran. However, Iranian government could not take serious actions toward the armed group because the Kurdish group was stationed in the area of Iraq and certain military attack surely could trigger issues between these two countries. That is why Iranian government initiated agreement related to common border between them. As the results, both parties agreed to protect common borders that connect these two nations. Both of them also agreed to conduct cooperation in certain security aspects that involve both nations.
In the agreement, representative of Iranian government was Ali Shamkhani. He was the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. From the Iraqi government side, the representative was Qasim Al-Araji. He served as advisor of Iraq’s National Security Advisor. During the event, Iraqi Prime Minister also presented. As what is mentioned above, one of the main reasons of initiating the agreement was the security issues caused by the Kurdish armed group. Iranian Revolutionary Guard launched attacked on the armed groups after some protests that led to some security issues. The protest itself occurred when Kurdish woman was death when she was being held by Iranian police. The attacks could not be continued further because the base of the armed group was in the area of Iraq. In addition to the protest, Iranian government also accused that the armed group was actually working together with Israel. Israel was the enemy of Iran and it was known by many people. Even, some evidences led Iranian government to say that there was Israeli spy agency that established their base in Iraqi region that belong to the Kurdish group. Thus, Iranian government asked cooperation of Iraqi government to provide support as prevention of any security threats that might occur in the future.
Two years earlier, Iranian government also signed cooperation, and it was with Turkish government. Representative of both countries held bilateral meeting in Tehran on October 2021. Representative of Iranian government was Ahmad Vahidi who was the Interior Minister of Iran. As the representative of Turkish government, Suleyman Soylu came to Tehran. Soylu gave interesting statement after the meeting. He said that it was not a form of diplomatic cooperation, yet it was more about fraternity between two countries. This was like showing that both countries share same concerns so they wanted to work together in solving the problems.
Some points were agreed between them. Those were concerns regarding counterterrorism, organized crimes on the common borders of two nation, and drug smugglings that involved area of these two countries. Both of them agreed to strengthen security on the common borders between them so these problems could be solved and precautions could be made so there could be not any problems in the future that can harm both nations. In addition to cooperation regarding the borders, both nations agreed to share knowledge and experiences that could strengthen and increase the capability of operational workforce on these countries.
Other concerns were discussed during the event. It was related to the problems that occurred in Afghanistan. Instability in this neighboring country was predicted to cause migrant wave that would came to the region of Turkey and Iran. Through proper cooperation between them, it was expected that there would not be any migrant influx in the area of Turkey and Iran. Turkey could not handle more migrants coming to the country anymore because there were already refugees from Syria as the impact of Taliban advancement to area of Kabul. Thus, Turkey tried to prevent more people coming to the country so it would not be refugee storage unit. That was why Turkey needed cooperation with Iranian government to prevent the predicted situation. The decision was necessary because the migrants and refugees coming to Turkey had caused issues and instabilities in the country and cooperation with Iran was expected to lessen the burdens and even help Iranian government so they would not face the same situation.