ARAR, at the Saudi Arabia-Iraq Border—Saudi Arabia, with U.S. assistance, is pushing aside years of rancor with its neighbor Iraq and mounting a broad effort to win Baghdad’s allegiance and dilute Iran’s influence over the pivotal U.S. ally.

Saudi authorities are courting Iraq’s Shiite leaders, expanding the kingdom’s diplomatic presence, opening direct flights and reopening crossings closed for decades on the heavily fortified, 600-mile border.

“We share historical, cultural and social links with Iraq,” Thamer al-Sabhan, minister of state for Gulf affairs said after stopping at the newly reopened Arar border crossing. “If anything, I think we should be moving even faster.”

The shift provides a political and economic lift to the Iraqi government as it drives Islamic State from the country and moves to rebuild.

For Washington, it is part of a push to align Iraq “a little more toward the Saudi Arabias and Turkeys of the world—and to blunt a little bit the Iranian influence,” said a U.S. official, who described Saudi-Iraqi friendship as a priority for the Trump administration. “It’s never too late.”

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The U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, which includes Saudi forces, has fought on the same side as Iran against the Sunni extremist group. Success in largely vanquishing the group, also known as Daesh, creates an opportunity for the coalition allies to gain leverage in Iraq.


“We have been focused over the last three years not only on defeating Daesh, but on what comes after Daesh,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting Islamic State, said at the border with Mr. Sabhan. “We will do everything we possibly can to support your effort,” he told Iraqi and Saudi officials gathered there.

Relations, and the Saudi-Iraqi border, were shut down in 1990 with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The Saudi monarchy kept its back turned on its northern neighbor in the years of war and instability that followed Saddam’s fall in 2003, leaving Iran to expand its sway through Iraq’s government, the powerful militias and the economy.

A new Saudi leadership is driving the shift, an example of the intensified efforts by King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to counter Iranian influence across the region, including a war against rebels in Yemen aligned with Iran.

Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has welcomed the counterweight to Iran. The Saudi outreach comes as he battles a political rival who is close to Tehran, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, ahead of parliamentary elections next year.

Iraqis arrive at pilgrimage lodgings in Saudi Arabia on their way to the annual hajj this month. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/DPA/Zuma Press

The first of around 140 flights connecting Baghdad, Riyadh and other cities each month are set to start in the coming weeks, Saudi and Iraqi officials said.


The border crossing at Arar was reopened this month for trade and travelers, just in time for Iraqis to make the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, now under way. Officials have agreed to open a second crossing next year.

Saudi efforts to rebuild relations got off to a rocky start. Soon after Saudi Arabia reopened its embassy in Baghdad in late 2015, Mr. Sabhan, the ambassador at the time, was expelled for criticizing Iraq’s Shiite militias and their ties to Iran.

But when he showed up on the Iraqi side of this desert outpost last week, Iraqi pilgrims lined up for selfies.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, receives Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 31. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Associated Press

“We are finally returning to the fold of our Arab brothers,” said Abed al-Maliki, one of the thousands of mostly Shiite Iraqi pilgrims who have crossed the border at Arar recently. A billboard of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greeted the pilgrims as they entered the kingdom.


The U.S. has been a broker in the rapprochement. Soon after the start of his tenure in February, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sought to persuade his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir, that the kingdom should carve out a bigger role for itself in Iraq, a U.S. official said.

Days later, on Feb. 25, Mr. Jubeir flew to Baghdad, the first by a Saudi foreign minister in decades. The trip marked a turning point. In June, Mr. Abadi traveled to the kingdom on an official visit, during which the two sides agreed to set up a joint council to upgrade ties in areas from security to trade.

Then, at the end of July, Iraqi cleric and Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr met with Crown Prince Mohammed in Saudi Arabia.

Until recently that encounter would have been unthinkable: The Iraqi cleric had repeatedly railed against the Sunni kingdom, and condemned its execution of prominent Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in early 2016.

An Iraqi pilgrim, far right, poses for a photo with Saudi minister Thamer al-Sabhan at the newly reopened Arar border crossing last week. Photo: Margherita Stancati/The Wall Street Journal

At the same time, Iran has deepened its influence in Iraq by supporting politicians such as Mr. Maliki and by funding and training Shiite militias now taking part in the battle against Islamic State.


Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, asked whether Saudi Arabia was trying to distance Iraqi officials from Iran through the recent visits, said he couldn’t speculate on what the intention was, but that Tehran wasn’t concerned, according to an interview published Wednesday by the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency.

“What’s important is that we are so self-confident about our role in the region and the type of relations we have with our neighbors that we are not worried about these moves,” he was quoted as saying.

Saudi Arabia is now seeking to expand its diplomatic presence across Iraq. The first new consulate, in Najaf, the spiritual and academic heartland of Shiite Islam, is likely to open in the next two months, Saudi and Iraqi officials said. More are set to open, in the southern city of Basra and in Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq.

But the Saudi push faces resistance. Many Iraqis blame Saudi Arabia for the rise of Sunni extremism in their country, saying the Saudis fueled its appeal through its strict interpretation of the faith.

Some Iraqis equate Saudi Arabia with Islamic State, pointing to the thousands of Saudis who have joined the group.

“The Saudis are fighting us only because we are Shiite, and now they want to be present in Najaf?” Ali Faza Mahdi, a 25-year-old member of a Shiite militia, said during a visit to Najaf’s shrine to Imam Ali, the venerable Shiite figure. “If they open a consulate here, we will attack them, just like we fought them at the front” near Mosul.

In Najaf, Shiite clerics aligned with Iran oppose rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, people close to the religious establishment said. Others—among them Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites—favor it as way to offset Iranian influence and to defuse Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region.

“Those who say: ‘We want nothing to do with Saudi Arabia’ are wrong,” said Dhiya al-Assadi, who is close to Mr. Sadr, the Iraqi cleric. “Iraq cannot ignore its surroundings.”

Saudi companies, including oil giant Aramco, are eyeing opportunities for investment in Iraq in areas including petrochemicals and agriculture. The Saudi dairy Almarai is considering producing animal feed in the impoverished border province of Muthanna, Saudi and Iraqi officials said.

Muthanna stands to benefit significantly from improved ties. Before the province’s Jumaima border crossing was closed 27 years ago, Muthanna thrived on trade between the two countries. Saudi Arabia exported goods ranging from cars to cigarettes to processed food to Iraq through the province, which in turn could sell dates and cement from its factory in the Saudi market. Shepherds and camel herders crossed the frontier freely.

Local officials in Muthanna estimated it would cost some $50 million to repair the dilapidated border crossing and the road leading to it.

“We lost all our prosperity when ties with Saudi were cut,” said Reesan Mutasher al-Zayad, a sheikh whose tribe straddles the border. “People have high hopes,” he said. “We look forward to having good relations with our Saudi brothers.”

—Ali Nabhan, Ghassan Adnan and Asa Fitch contributed to this article.

Write to Margherita Stancati at margherita.stancati@wsj.com