( AFP ) - The sudden closure by Iran of its border with northern Iraq began taking its toll on Tuesday, with queues of trucks forming at the frontier and experts warning of severe economic fallout.
Tehran said on Monday it was closing its frontier with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region in protest at the detention last week of an Iranian by US troops.
"There are a huge number of trucks waiting to cross the border into Kurdistan but the Iranians are not allowing them through," said the mayor of Joman town near the Haj Umran border post in northern Iraq.
"The trucks are carrying frozen goods such as chicken, meat and eggs which are going to spoil. We spoke to the Iranian officials but they refused to allow the border post to open," Abdul Wahid Koani told AFP.
Economic analyst Mohammed Salman of the University of Arbil warned that people on both sides of the frontier would be affected.
"The closure of the border will hit both the Iranians and Iraqis because Kurdistan is considered a fertile market for Iranian goods," said Salman.
Aziz Ibrahim, director general of the Kurdish ministry of trade, agreed there could be significant economic damage.
"There are 120 Iranian firms working in different regions of Kurdistan, most of which are participating in construction projects and have signed trade contracts with Iraqi concerns," Ibrahim told AFP.
"Kurdistan is a key trading partner with Iran and a major importer of Iranian goods," he said.
Kurdistan trade minister Mohammed Raouf estimated the value of goods crossing the border annually at one billion dollars.
Iran said it had shut the border following the detention on Thursday by US forces of Mahmudi Farhadi.
The US military charges that Farhadi is an officer in the covert operations arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, accused by American commanders of helping Shiite militias involved in Iraq's bloody sectarian conflict.
"We have closed the border and we hope the Iraqi authorities will act as quickly as possible to release our colleague," the governor of Iran's northwestern Kordestan province, Esmaeel Najar, told AFP on Monday.
"We had said that if he (Farhadi) was not freed rapidly, we would reconsider our commercial ties" with the Iraqi Kurdish region, Najar added.
Asked when the border would reopen, he replied: "We hope that the Iraqi authorities will act as swiftly as possible to free our colleague."
Iran has made clear that it regards Iraqi sovereignty at stake in Farhadi's continued custody after both the regional and national authorities of Iraq said he had been visiting with their consent.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, had warned senior US officials on Saturday that Iran was poised to close the border over the Farhadi affair.
In an indignant letter to General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker, Talabani said the arrest of an Iranian official who had been invited by the Kurdish authorities was "a humiliation for the regional administration."
The row comes as Iran intensifies its pressure on the Iraqi authorities to close the rear bases of separatist Kurdish guerrillas active in the Islamic republic's western provinces.
On Saturday, Iran confirmed for the first time that it had shelled suspected positions inside Iraq of the PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), a rebel group linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Iran has accused the United States of turning a blind eye to the actions of the rebels amid the escalating dispute over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.
Washington also accuses Tehran of fomenting unrest in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
On Sunday, the American military charged that Iran was smuggling surface-to-air missiles as well as sophisticated explosives to Shiite militia groups in Iraq.