The story: Ali Al-Zaidi has drawn praise and fury at home with his visit to Damascus, the first by an Iraqi prime minister since the fall of Syria’s Ba’athist government in Dec. 2024. While his talks with President Ahmed Al-Sharaa primarily covered energy cooperation and trade, commentary in Iraq has largely focused on a sectarian dimension. Meanwhile, some commentators are charging that the trip has exposed Iraqi Shiite armed factions' previous threats against Syria’s new Sunni-dominated leadership as hollow.

The coverage: News that Zaidi had donated a total of 10M USD of his own money to the Sayyidah Zainab shrine, a major Shiite pilgrimage site, and the Umayyad Mosque emerged within hours of his arrival on Oct. 28. The gift quickly drove sectarian commentary in Iraqi media.

  • Kurdistan Watch wrote on Twitter/X that his prayer at the 8th-century mosque was "a sensitive gesture," given the Umayyad dynasty's role in the killing of Hussein ibn Ali, a grandson of Prophet Muhammad and the third Shiite Imam, at Karbala in 680 CE.

  • The same X account also cast the trip as an opening by the Shiite ruling establishment in Baghdad toward the Sunni-led states on most of Iraq's borders.

Writer Mustafa Salim criticized the premier’s spending on shrines "instead of development institutions." He also recalled that Shiite "militias" had fought in Syria "on the pretext of defending" the Sayyidah Zainab shrine.

  • Sunni former MP Mishaan Al-Jabouri noted that Zaidi, despite being "brought to power by Shiite Islamist forces, some of which bear a historical hostility" to the Umayyads, had prayed at the Damascus-based dynasty's historic mosque. The ex-lawmaker suggested this was a "reconciliation with history."

  • Firas Al-Musalmawi, spokesman for the Reconstruction and Development Coalition of former prime minister Muhammad Shia' Al-Sudani (2022-26), told Iraq's Shafaq News on Oct. 28 that Zaidi’s visit had bolstered "the security of the Shiite minority in Syria."

  • Another supporter of the trip, Iraqi commentator Mujahed Al-Taee, listed the warnings of media aligned with Shiite armed factions—including "Sayyidah Zainab is in danger" and "the resistance is ready to enter Syria"—and asked, "Where did the hollow statements go?"


On Oct. 28, Sabereen News, a Telegram channel widely seen as affiliated with Iran-backed armed groups, wrote that Zaidi was leaving "to meet Al-Jolani," using Sharaa's former nom de guerre.

  • Al-Maalomah, an Iraqi outlet viewed as close to Shiite factions, framed the trip as the product of pressure from Thomas Barrack, the US special presidential envoy to both Iraq and Syria. Citing an unnamed Syrian source, the outlet claimed the aim was to reopen crossings that could let "thousands" of "extremists" into Iraq.

Not every outlet tied to Iraqi armed factions followed suit. Al-Ahad TV, an affiliate of Asa'ib Ahl Al-Haq, on Oct. 28 carried researcher Bassam Raad's view that the trip "paves the way for a possible economic shift" if understandings become "binding agreements."

  • Early the next day, the channel quoted political observer Ibrahim Al-Sultani as calling oil export coordination with Syria "a positive step."

Zaidi’s office stated on Oct. 28 that the two leaders discussed plans to transfer crude through the revival of a cross-border pipeline ending at the Syrian port of Baniyas, at up to 2M barrels per day.

  • One user on X wrote on the day of Zaidi’s visit that with Baniyas eventually open to Iraqi crude, the country would no longer need the Strait of Hormuz, its current main export route, and called Sharaa a good neighbor.

  • However, none of the official readouts offered further details on the pipeline project, including the timeline and how it would be funded. 

The next day, another commentator posted that "Iran choked Iraq" in Hormuz, which was effectively closed for months after the Israeli-US war on Iran began on Feb. 28, while "Syria saved Iraq" by offering a possible outlet to the Mediterranean.

  • Others doubted the case for such a pipeline. One user argued on Oct. 28 that the Strait of Hormuz would be secure again by the time the Baniyas pipeline project was finished, and called for the construction of Iraqi refineries on the Syrian coast instead.

The context/analysis: Iraqi armed factions' hostility to Sharaa has a long history. In May 2025, then-prime minister Sudani invited the new Syrian leader to the Arab League summit in Baghdad.

  • The invitation caused an uproar because of an old Iraqi arrest warrant against Sharaa, dating from his years fighting US forces with Al-Qaeda. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani attended in his place.

When forces loyal to Damascus pushed into Syria's northeast in January, sectarian rhetoric in Iraqi media stoked fears that Islamic State group (IS) fighters held there would be freed. That was a key element of the backdrop to Iraqi factions' earlier warnings against Damascus, which are now being thrown back at them.

  • Iraq’s governing camp has nonetheless moved toward Damascus, and parts of it now frame the relationship as one that has to rise above sectarian lines.

  • For Baghdad, Shiite pilgrims' access to holy shrines in Syria has become as much a question of security at home as of faith. Zaidi's gift to the Sayyidah Zainab shrine fits that framing.

Behind the sectarian sparring, the visit's main business was oil. Iraqi crude once reached the Syrian coast through the Kirkuk-Baniyas line, out of service since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

  • The plans to revive the route drop the northern leg to Kirkuk. The line would instead start at Haditha in Anbar Governorate, a hub for an approved Basra-Haditha pipeline financed under a framework agreement with China.

  • Baghdad and Damascus signed a memorandum of understanding on the topic in July, and a consortium of Chevron, TI Capital and UCC Holding is studying the new line.

Who will pay for the costly renovations, or the construction of an entirely new pipeline, remains open.

  • One analysis has put the cost at no less than 15B USD and set out three funding models. In one, Iraq would finance its own section and subsidize the Syrian stretch in exchange for a long-term transit agreement.

  • In an Oct. 14 column for the Iraqi Noon News Agency, Ahmed Fateh Mohammed called the plan "a complex political trade." In his reading, Damascus helps isolate armed groups along the border, while Iraq's treasury and oil serve as "collateral for paying the bill."


The future: The next test for reviving the Baniyas pipeline is a binding contract. Neither government has named a cost, a financing source or a timetable, and the July memorandum is a statement of intent, not a construction agreement.

  • Iraqi government spokesman Haidar Al-Aboudi said on Oct. 29 that an agreement with international companies, among them Chevron, to lay a pipeline toward the Syrian coast would come soon. In an Oct. 27 interview, Sharaa called his country "Iraq's seafront on the Mediterranean."

  • Security will also shape the relationship. In the same Oct. 27 interview, Sharaa said some of the more than 3,000 Syrians among the IS suspects that the US military moved to Iraq this year, away from Kurdish-run prisons in northeastern Syria, have no ties to the militant group. Damascus, he added, "must bear responsibility" for them.

  • The objections of Iraqi armed factions to Baghdad’s warming ties with Damascus may prove self-defeating. If those ties deepen without their say, the episode could be read as a sign of their waning influence.