President Hassan Rouhani has reiterated that Iran backs Iraq in its fight against terrorists.
The president made the remarks in a meeting with visiting Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday.
"Iran stands by the Iraqi nation in their battle against terrorism and has never set any conditions for its supports," he said.
Rouhani also hoped for closer cooperation between the two countries.
He touched on the great potential between Tehran and Baghdad to expand cooperation and said, "I hope, through the two countries' constant constructive efforts, they will be able to expand bilateral relations more than ever before," IRNA reported.
He referred to the Arab country as Iran's friendly neighbor and said, "We are pleased to hear that the Iraqi nation has managed to gain remarkable progress in the fight against terrorism."
The president said the Iraqi nation and army are definitely able to defend their country against terrorist groups and they need no other country's military intervention.
He added, "Preserving the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq is important to us, since (only) an integrated Iraq is capable to help secure stability in the region."
Rouhani described unity among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq as pleasing and called it necessary for the future of the country.
Maliki, for his part, said his country is facing two threats at the same time, terrorists' efforts to disintegrate regional states and foreign plots hatched against the countries in the region.
He said, "With the presence of foreign forces in the country after the fall of the former Iraqi regime, we witnessed security disarray in the country due to sectarian conflicts."
He added, "We benefited from Iran's experience to take advantage of volunteer forces and succeeded to stop the advance of terrorists," referring to the Iraqi army's gains in the fight against militants of the Islamic State who have seized control of large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.
