AP |�NASSER KARIMI: Iran�s president is making his first official visit to Iraq this week as he faces mounting pressure from hard-liners at home in the wake of the Trump administration�s unravelling of the nuclear deal.

Hassan Rouhani�s trip � billed as �historic and noble� by his foreign minister � is meant to solidify ties between Shia power Iran and Iraq�s Shia led-government, a strong Tehran ally. It is also Iran�s response to President Donald Trump�s snap December trip to Iraq and the American president�s comments that U.S. forces should stay in Iraq to keep an eye on neighboring Iran, with which Iraq shares a 1,400-kilometer-long (870 miles) border.

At the time, Trump slipped into Iraq at night, without stopping in Baghdad, to greet U.S. service members at a base far from the Iraqi capital where he extolled the American troops� fight against the Islamic State group.

Rouhani later mocked Trump�s visit, asserting that flying into Iraq under the cover of darkness meant �defeat� for the U.S. in Iraq and asking the U.S. president why he didn�t make an �open and official visit.�

�You have to walk in the streets of Baghdad ... to find out how people will welcome you,� Rouhani said at the time.

Rouhani�s visit to Iraq will provide an opportunity for reaching �serious understandings� between the two neighbors, Iran�s top diplomat, Mohammad Javad Zarif told the official IRNA news agency from Baghdad, where he was preparing for Rouhani�s three-day visit that starts on Monday.

Rouhani, who had visited Iraq privately before becoming president, had planned an official visit in 2016 but that one was cancelled over unspecified �executive� problems.

This time, Rouhani, who is on a second four-year-term, is particularly vulnerable because of the economic crisis assailing the Iranian rial, which has hurt ordinary Iranians and emboldened critics to openly call for the president�s ouster.

Tehran sees the U.S. military presence at its doorstep in Iraq as a threat � one that could also undermine Iran�s influence over Baghdad.

Zarif alluded to that on Sunday, saying that any country which tries to interfere with the good Iran-Iraq relations would �be deprived of opportunities for itself.�

Iran also sees Iraq as a possible route to bypass U.S. sanctions that Trump re-imposed last year after pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

Last year, Iran�s exports to Iraq amounted to nearly $9 billion. Tehran hopes to increase the roughly $13 billion volume in trade between the two neighboring countries to $20 billion. Also, some 5 million religious tourists bring in nearly $5 billion a year as Iraqis and Iranians visit Shiite holy sites in the two countries.

Under former dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq waged an eight-year war in the 1980s against Iran, a conflict that left nearly 1 million killed on both sides.