Islamabad: Pakistani officials announced on Monday that the top military leaders of Pakistan and its neighbor Iran had reached an agreement to increase their intelligence-sharing and cooperation as well as to take "effective actions" to stop attacks along their porous border by separatist militants.

Gen. Asim Munir, the powerful army chief of Pakistan, visited Tehran over the weekend, where he reportedly reached the agreement. Munir made a two-day trip to Tehran in response to an uptick in attacks in the nation's Baluchistan province, which shares a long border with Iran and Afghanistan in the country's southwest.

Because of cross-border attacks by Pakistani militants, relations between Pakistan and Iran have fluctuated over the past few years. A long-running insurgency demanding the independence of gas- and oil-rich Baluchistan from the central government has been led by small separatist groups.

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Recent years have seen an increase in tension between the two countries as militants opposed to Iran from Pakistan have also targeted the Iranian border.
According to a statement from Pakistan's military, Munir met with Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian army, and made a call to President Ebrahim Raisi.

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It stated that both parties recognized terrorism as a common threat. "They vowed to eradicate (the) menace of terrorism in the border areas through intelligence sharing and effective actions against the terrorists' networks, and explore avenues for enhancing cooperation in the security domain," the statement read.

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The visit also comes at a time when tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan's Taliban leaders have risen. Islamabad has accused them of providing sanctuary to a significant illegal militant organization known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan in 2021, the group has grown more confident.