Story highlights Iran is conducting naval exercises in the region

The nations fought a protracted military conflict between 1980 and 1988

The Middle East neighbors have enjoyed closer ties in recent years

The leaders of both nations are Shia Muslims

Iran is prepared to expand military and security cooperation with neighboring Iraq, a top Iranian military official said -- a week after U.S. forces pulled out of Iraq.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to establish, boost and expand all types of military, defense and security cooperation with the friendly and brotherly nation of Iraq," Iran's armed forces chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi said, according to a report Sunday by the semi-official Fars news agency.

The Middle East neighbors have enjoyed closer ties in recent years, especially as Iraq's Shia Muslim majority has solidified its power in the absence of former leader Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim. Iran's theocracy is Shia-led.

The development comes as Iran is flexing its naval muscles in the region by staging war games

The drills are the largest ever planned by Iran and are being staged in an area that stretches from the eastern part of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the the Gulf of Aden, Fars reported last week.

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The maneuvers began on Saturday.

"These war games are a warning to the western countries about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz," Zohreh Elahian, a member of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said Monday, according to Fars. "If any threat is posed to Iran, the Islamic Republic is capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz."

The strait is a narrow shipping channel that leads in and out of the Persian Gulf between Oman and Iran. It is strategically important because oil tankers carrying Middle East oil travel through it.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq gives Tehran more freedom to exert its influence in Iraq, analysts say.

"It will not have negative effects against Iran," said James Gelvin, a history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, about the U.S. pullout.

Mike Breen, vice president of the progressive Truman National Security Project in Washington, described the ties between Iran and Iraq as "complicated."

"I would say it's too soon to tell because the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government are only beginning to write the next chapter in their nation's history, and they have a complicated relationship with their neighbor Iran, and that's not always been a positive relationship," Breen said.

The nations fought a protracted military conflict between 1980 and 1988, in which up to 1.5 million people died. Iran accepted a U.N.-mandated cease-fire in July 1988.