The meeting between the two presidents took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.

It came amid rising regional tensions that spilled over in Iraq after the killing of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, and the simultaneous assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces or PMF) in an airstrike ordered by Trump near Baghdad airport earlier this month.

Al-Muhandis was also the founder of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group that the United States targeted in Iraq and Syria on December 30, killing at least 25 fighters and injuring more than 50. The attack was in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor two days earlier.