Iran reopens its border with Iraq’s Kurdish north

Iran reopened its border Monday with Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, which it closed last month to protest the detention of an Iranian official there by U.S. forces.

Iran agreed to reopen the five border crossings after the Kurdish regional authorities sent a delegation to Tehran to argue that they should not be punished for a dispute with the United States.

In a deal announced Sunday, the two sides pledged to crack down on Iranian Kurdish rebels who are using Iraq as a base to launch attacks against Iran, and Iraqi militants who are using Iran as a base to attack Kurdish regional authorities.

The landlocked Kurdish-run region depends on two-way trade with Iran, which supplies key goods and provides an export route for local products.

Iranian foodstuffs, medicines, construction materials and other goods account for about 60% of what is used in the region, said Hassan Baqi, who heads the Chamber of Commerce in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniya. The closure of the nearby Bashmakh crossing alone affected the livelihoods of about 3,000 Iraqi drivers, laborers and merchants, he said.

In northern Iraq, trucks rolled across the border Monday at the five crossings for the first time since Sept. 24, Baqi said.

Iran had closed the border posts after U.S. forces detained an Iranian official they accused of helping to supply weapons and training to Shiite Muslim militants on behalf of the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard.

Iraqi and Iranian officials have said the man detained in Sulaymaniya, Mahmoud Farhadi, was part of an official delegation; they have demanded his release. He is one of at least six Iranians held by U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

Iraq has struggled to balance relations with its two most important allies, the United States and Iran. This year, Iraq played host to two meetings between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi. But Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, accused Kazemi-Qomi over the weekend of being a member of the Quds Force, a charge denied by Tehran.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said Monday that it would be “premature to talk about any more talks” until Iran ceases to provide weapons, funding and other backing to militants accused of attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. Iran denies doing so, and the U.S. military has released no conclusive evidence that the Iranian weapons it has found in Iraq were supplied by authorities in Tehran.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

A special correspondent in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.