Iraqi Troops Mass Along Iran Border

Iran rejects reports of oil well seizure in Iraq: Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji confirmed that there has been no actual takeover. "This news is not true. This field is disputed and now it is neglected by both sides. There was no storming of the field, it's empty, it's abandoned, it is exactly on the border between Iraq and Iran," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Iran rejects Iraqi incursion claim: Iran's Armed Forces Command issued a statement on Saturday making clear that, in Tehran's view, there had been no incursion into Iraq as the oil well is within Iranian borders. "Our forces are on our own soil and, based on the known international borders, this well belongs to Iran," the statement said.

Iraq demands withdrawal of Iranian troops: Iraq's deputy interior minister said earlier that 11 Iranian soldiers had crossed the Iran-Iraq border on Friday afternoon, the latest in a series of recent incursions, and taken position at an oil well in the remote desert border area. Iran denied the incursion into Iraqi territory.

Iran troops leave oil well, still in Iraq: Dabbagh
Amara, Iraq (AFP) Dec 20, 2009 - Iranian troops who for three days controversially occupied a disputed border oil well left the facility during the night but remain on Iraqi soil, Iraq's government spokesman said Sunday. "The Iranian forces have pulled back 50 metres (yards) from the well and have taken their flag but we now demand they return to where they have come from and that negotiations begin on the demarcation of ... more

STRATFOR: The Iran Incursion Wasn't Trivial, Was Meant As A Clear Message To Washington DC

It seems as though many folks have concluded that last week's incursion by Iranian forces into Iraq, and onto an old oil well, was a minor, meaingless story.

A popular, benign, interpretation is that it was just a few, rogue Iranian forces foolishly hoisting a flag onto a well that wasn't pumping oil, with absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

Not so say the independent geopolitics analysts at Stratfor.

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Multiple sources have reported that Tehran ordered the incident. The Iranian government is aware that Washington has said the end of 2009 was to be the deadline for taking action against Iran over its nuclear program — and that according to a White House source, the United States could extend that deadline to Jan. 15, 2010.

That postponement makes an important point. The United States has treated the Iran crisis as something that will be handled on an American timeline. The way that the Obama administration handled the Afghanistan strategy review suggests it assumes that Washington controls the tempo of events sufficiently that it can make decisions carefully, deliberately and with due reflection. If true, that would mean that adversaries like Iran are purely on the defensive, and either have no counter to American moves or cannot counter the United States until after Washington makes its next move.

For Iran, just to accept that premise puts it at an obvious disadvantage. First, Tehran would have to demonstrate that the tempo of events is not simply in American or Israeli hands. Second, Tehran would have to remind the United States and Israel that Iran has options that it might use regardless of whether the United States chooses sanctions or war. Most important, Iran must show that whatever these options are, they can occur before the United States acts — that Iran has axes of its own, and may not wait for the U.S. axe to fall.

The incursion was shaped to make this point without forcing the United States into precipitous action. The location was politically ambiguous. The force was small. Casualties were avoided. At the same time, it was an action that snapped a lot of people to attention. Oil prices climbed. Baghdad and Washington scrambled to try to figure what was going on, and for a while Washington was clearly at a loss, driving home the fact that the United States doesn’t always respond quickly and efficiently to surprises initiated by the other side.

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Between this incident and the mounting concerns over Greece (et. al.) it's obvious that the conventional wisdom is that the dominant concerns of 2010 will involve sovereign risk and geopolitical risk.