TEHRAN – Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif has arrived in Iran to attend a memorial ceremony for President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian.

The two Iranian officials, along with six others, embraced martyrdom in a tragic helicopter crash in northwestern Iran on Sunday.

Shehbaz Sharif seemed to have formed a close bond with President Raisi in the past years. He met the late leader for the first time in 2022, to inaugurate a market at the joint border of Iran and Pakistan.

The two successfully navigated a complicated and rocky situation early this year when Tehran and Islamabad exchanged reciprocal airstrikes on each other’s soil. They also consolidated their countries’ bilateral relations by finalizing the agreement for a grand electricity transmission line.