Iraq and Syria have signed a technical agreement to strengthen cooperation over the shared waters of the Euphrates River, including joint monitoring stations and a trilateral format bringing in Turkiye.

Syria's Ministry of Energy and Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources signed the minutes of a bilateral technical meeting in Damascus on Thursday, agreeing to improve joint water management and coordinate on Euphrates resources.

What the agreement covers

According to a statement by Syria's Ministry of Energy, the agreement includes activating trilateral coordination between Syria, Iraq and Turkiye on transboundary water issues related to the Euphrates. The two sides also agreed to establish joint hydrological monitoring stations along the river.

They agreed to step up the exchange of water-related data and information, conduct regular joint water-quality tests, and expand technical cooperation, capacity-building and expertise-sharing in water resource management, dam monitoring and dam operations.

Trilateral talks planned

The statement added that both sides would prepare for the next meeting in a trilateral format, with Turkiye participating, in March 2027.

The talks follow a technical agreement signed in Baghdad on 25 June, and come as Iraq reports a sharp improvement in inflows. Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources has said the volume of water arriving through the Euphrates has risen fourfold compared with last year, reaching 680 cubic metres per second at the Syrian border against 151 cubic metres per second in the same period last year.

The ministry attributed the improvement to rainfall in Turkiye and Syria and to water management by Turkiye, and said stored water at the Haditha Dam had reached 4.8 billion cubic metres. Under the understanding between the countries, of the 500 cubic metres per second at the Turkiye-Syria border, 58 percent should go to Iraq and 42 percent to Syria.