The roughly 30km line will connect the Iraqi city of Basra to the Iranian border town of Shalamja.
Iran’s vice-president Mohammad Mokhber and Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani laid the foundation stone for the project on Sept 2, 2023.
The roughly 30km line will run between Iraq’s southern city of Basra and the Iranian border town of Shalamja, linking nations with ties that have deepened since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, after which pro-Tehran Shiite Muslim parties enhanced their influence in Baghdad. He added that the government also planned a metro link between Karbala and Najaf, the seat of Iraqi Shiite clergy.
But since the US toppled former leader Saddam Hussein in 2003, Shiite Muslim parties close to Tehran have become key political players in Baghdad and economic and religious ties between both nations have expanded.Regularly, the world’s largest annual religious gathering of up to 20 million mostly Shiite Muslims takes part in the “Arbaeen” pilgrimage to Iraq’s holy city of Karbala to commemorate the slaying of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.