Iran rejects reports of Iraqi oil well seizure as attempt to harm ties

Iran rejects reports of Iraqi oil well seizure as attempt to harmties

news.xinhuanet.com

"Foreign media made unfounded allegation ... and attempted to disrupt friendly relations between Iran and Iraq by propaganda campaign," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying.

Iraq's state-run al-Sabah newspaper on Saturday quoted the government spokesmen Ali al-Dabbagh as saying that the Iraqi Security Council has "stressed that the incident is a violation to Iraq's sovereignty and territories and called upon Iran to pull out its troops from the well."

(visit the link for the full news article)

Edit to add New York Times Account of same story

[edit on 19-12-2009 by DaddyBare]

So now were gonna get this He said she said deal.
Iran claims Foreign media made unfounded allegation but the organal story came from Iraq's state-run al-Sabah newspaper.
not what I would call a "Foreign Media"

The timing of the Iranian incursion, however small, may be significant. It came only days after the Iraqi Oil Ministry held a two-day auction for 20-year service contracts among international oil companies.

These companies will now take over 10 of Iraq's main oil fields and boost production as soon as possible. Baghdad needs the revenue to bankroll its reconstruction plans and restore Iraq's fortunes after decades of war, sanction and upheaval.

But the OPEC states are not happy about that because Shahristani's ambitious project threatens to cut into their oil earnings


news.xinhuanet.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Hey, if they are not Iranian.....

Just set up the snipers and "eliminate" them.

Problem over.

reply to post by mrmonsoon


If you read accounts of what happened ... they report several car loads of well armed men showed up at the well site, ordered every one out and after staying a shot time placed the Iranian Flag on the well then left...

Ali Hussein Balou, chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's Oil and Gas Committee said this was a warning. If Iraq continues to try and develop their natural resources there would be reprisals... it's not the first time either back in 1975 Iran sent a regiment into the region then later in the 1980's an eight year long war would be wagged for control of those oil fields...

who's to say what Iran is thinking by pulling a stunt like this now.. but it really doesn't help there, "Stop Picking on our poor peace loving nation"!Campaign

[edit on 19-12-2009 by DaddyBare]

Militarily it makes no sense whatsoever for Iran to use a small squad of men to invade Iraq and take over ONE oil well.

Iran’s own oil infrastructure is antiquated and badly maintained and poorly run from a logistical standpoint. They need a broken down Iraqi oil well like you and I need another hole in our heads.

There is absolutely no military or economic advantage in invading with such a small force, and attempting to secure ONE oil well with such a small force it can be easily repulsed.

Where a small force would have an advantage is in a Dirty Dozen type of false flag attack where it’s only possible to come up with a small amount of authentic Iranian military uniforms, papers, and equipment and likewise a small number of Farsi speakers so that a small military unit made up of non-Iranians can appear to be Iranian.

Iraq’s press is beholden to the regime in Baghdad which is a U.S. Installed Regime and not a very popular one.

Hundreds of Iraqis continue to die each week and sometimes daily from sectarian violence inside of Iraq and opposition to the U.S. installed regime. The government in Baghdad is desperate to paint its lack of legitimacy and the continued violence against it to having to do with foreigners like Iran as opposed to admitting the hard truth that it is a puppet regime that the majority of Iraqis don’t want to be governed by.

When Iran defended itself in a 10 year long bloody war instigated against it by Iraq that resulted in millions of casualties on both sides it was fought year after year with hundreds of thousands of men manning trenches on both sides of the front line, not a dozen men attempting to wage a war against a nation of tens upon tens of millions of people.

This has orchestrated false flag and propaganda event written all over it.

Iran has no motive regarding OPEC pricing strategies because Iran’s oil infrastructure is so crippled they can’t even produce enough oil to keep from having to import gasoline for domestic consumption. In part that’s why they desire nuclear energy. Decades of sanctions and trade restrictions have left their own oil infrastructure in little better shape than the Iraqis.

Ultimately oil hungry China will likely invest in Iran’s oil infrastructure and get it back up and running again, that is if a U.S. led invasion can’t beat them to it.

This propaganda war being waged against Iran is the ugliest and most blatant I have seen in my 45 years on the planet and the most extreme propaganda war being waged since the beginnings of World War II.

That in and of itself is not a good sign, and the best and safest thing freedom loving and peaceful citizens and people everywhere can do is reject this propaganda and start questioning all these flimsy lies and accusations being made.

The reality is they can’t hold up to real logical and common sense questions.

Harrtz

Iranian forces earlier this week crossed into Iraq, seizing an oil well just over the border in the southern Maysan province. The takeover - which included planting an Iranian flag on the well - was met by protests from Baghdad.

The Iraqi troops and border guards were waiting for further orders at a
staging ground about a kilometer from oil well No. 4 at the al-Fakkah oil
field, said an Interior Ministry official at the site who was not authorized to talk to the media

Since Iran says it's not them, allow snipers to "eliminate" the threat.

Examine bodies for nationality-like we all don't know they are Iranian...

reply to post by mrmonsoon


Laugh out loud it sounds to me like there is plenty of sniping going on already when this is all attributed to a un-named Iraqi Official not authorized to make statements to the press.

Of course that doesn't stop a Zionist rag like Haartz from publishing lies with no real named source to give them creedence.

Sometimes it seems like that is the extent of the Zionist Israeli contribution to mankind, lies. It seems that's the only thing Zionist Israel creates and exports is lies.

Never any credible source, never any credible coroboration just highly biased, poisoned, and inflamatory accusations and rhetoric.

Talk about a lack of integrity!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


lets keep the facts stright here okay

Iraq's pretext for the war was an alleged assassination attempt on Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in southern Iraq, which Saddam Hussein blamed on "Iranian agents", in one of his speeches.


The Shatt al-Arab waterway on the Iran–Iraq border"Relations deteriorated rapidly until in March 1980, Iran unilaterally downgraded its diplomatic ties to the charge d'affaires level, withdrew its ambassador, and demanded that Iraq do the same. The tension increased in April following the attempted assassination of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and, three days later, the bombing of a funeral procession being held to bury students who had died in an earlier attack. Iraq blamed Iran, and in September, attacked


it was a nasty brutal war that left both sides to harbor deep resentment. But when you look historically at the kinds of first actions Iran makes, this fits in perfectly... they provoke until they get someone to shoot at them then cry foul...

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by mrmonsoon

 

Talk about a lack of integrity!

Did you not notice my story source? xinhuanet From China... they have no love of the western world and even they dont believe Iran is innocent in this

reply to post by DaddyBare


OK let’s keep facts straight here.

The CIA and the SAVAK orchestrated all those events that led to the Iraq versus Iran war.

The last thing the fledgling theocracy in Iran needed at that point was a long major costly and bloody war with a neighbor.

The reality is that it is a historically accepted fact that Operation Ajax carried out by the CIA is what led to the democracy that was working in Iran in the fifties being replaced through a coup de tat with the Shah’s Monarchy and the Peacock Throne.

This was done primarily because the Iranian Democracy had nationalized the oilfields and kicked out the British who were running them and keeping most of the profits off of them.

The Shah’s regime thanks to the CIA and the SAVAK was a brutal and repressive one. Dissidents in Iran in those days were labeled communists. This was before the Islamic Jihadist Boogie Man was invented. In those days it was always the communist boogie man that was responsible for all the ills and woes of the world.

The Shah’s Iran was a two class society, a small and influential group of extremely wealthy, well educated and well travelled jet setting oligarchs. Every one else though was dirt poor and lived in abject squalor.

A vast and very repressive with some of the worst human rights violations ever documented security apparatus maintained by the CIA and run through the SAVAK kept a lid on things.

Until the student uprising and revolt that eventually led to the Theocracy that currently rules Iran.

Even after ousted from power by a popular rebellion the will of the people, the United Kingdom and the United States tried to violently return the Shah to power and failed.

Ever since then it has been nothing but a vindictive campaign to punish Iran for that and the first part of that punishment was manipulating Saddam Hussein who at that time was a CIA asset to go to war with Iran.

A war that dirt poor Iran that had most of its national assets frozen in accounts abroad in the United States and Europe truly did not want need or invite.

It was a war that was designed to in part grind up the very sophisticated, state of the art, but high maintenance military arsenal that the Shah’s government had received from the United States so that in short order most of it would either be lost through attrition or wear and tear that would render it inoperable because of an inability to get replacement parts.

That latter part is what led to the Iran Contra, Arms for Hostages conspiracy and scandal involving Oliver North and the Regan Administration.

The whole premise behind getting Iraq to attack Iran was to keep the nation bankrupt at war, and to render its state of the art military technology inoperable.

The long and the short of it is that while you might believe your fairy tale version of events people who were actually alive at the time and witnessed what unfolded first hand with a critical and questioning mind know better than this highly propagandized take you are promoting.

Iran has been beset by the British and the United States both seeking to control its oil wealth and the vital Straights of Hormuz since the end of World War II.

The CIA and MI5’s history is full of covert actions many of them successful inside Iran and against Iran which because they were successful is why they are documented and accepted parts of the CIA and MI5’s history.

Operation Ajax that removed Iran’s popular and democratically elected President in 1952 is considered to be a classic text book perfect example of how to run a coup de tat as an intelligence agency.

So now that we have our facts straight about the long and sordid history of Western Intelligence Agencies meddling inside Iran with murderous and larcenous intent and effect from coveting its oil wealth what other fictional propaganda would you like to attempt to sell to the lemmings of mankind today friend?

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Perhaps you prefer Iran's terrorists times? (PressTV)

We know you love it and we all know it has been proven again and again to be nothing but lies-ATS search function is your friend.

I know:
Google lied
Yahoo lied
BBC lied
US lied
UK lied
EU lied
Saudi Arabia lied
UAE lied
Iraq lied

Are we seeing a pattern here??

reply to post by mrmonsoon


You know my friend you can get quite a lot of people to unwittingly lie when the entity at the top of the food chain makes that lie appear truthful to them.

If an intelligence agency set the thing up correctly with a small group of operatives dressed appropriately using the right language and dialect and accents, so that it appeared to be what was claimed on the surface then those various reporting entities wouldn’t per say know they were lying would they.

While these kinds of shoddy journalistic endeavors attempt to purport hearsay and innuendo as facts for the sake of creating propaganda here is what we don’t know that very much goes to credibility.

We don’t have any NAMED source whose reputation is attached to CLAIMING that it was Iranians. While your article says the Iraqi Official wasn’t authorized to speak to the press obviously that didn’t stop the press from claiming that they spoke to that unnamed official. All it seems to have prevented was any credible investigative journalist with integrity from finding out who that unnamed official was and attempting to interview him and perhaps during the course of that uncovering a whole different set of facts or story.

What you don’t have is any interviews with the supposed Iranian forces that supposedly invaded.

What you don’t have is any pictures or their unit insignias or names.

What you don’t have is the exact location or time that this took place or the names of anyone who was supposedly displaced, removed or assaulted by these Iranians.

You don’t have anything that makes the story real, you have wire services putting it out, and as usual a number of different publications and broadcasters picking up the wire service story and running with it.

The number of publications and broadcasters printing or airing a poorly sourced story doesn’t make it any more credible, and since the alleged attackers didn’t occupy the supposed well they are accused of having taken over, and there are no names of anyone involved no one can be sued for defamation so the publishers and broadcasters wouldn’t have anyone to follow up with to disprove the story, but more importantly no one to sue them for printing a basically unsubstantiated wire service piece with no credible sources.

In fact all you are basically doing is hoping that because a number of different entities put the story out there which once one major publication or broadcaster does all the others will follow suit for market and ratings reasons is somehow going to make something that makes no sense credible.

The fact that some people are so incredibly biased and prejudiced against Muslims and Iranians just tends to allow them to accept anything that is published that substantiates and validates that prejudice and biased. They can believe such poorly sourced and logic defying accounts because they want to believe them.

The fact that such agenda driven bigots want to believe utter unsubstantiated fiction doesn’t make it more credible, in fact it makes it less credible as they expose their own bigotry and agenda in how they argue that the story is credible and should be accepted.

The story isn’t credible and no one is served well by pretending it is just to indulge warmongering bigots whose insatiable bloodlust, greed and desire for dominance at any and all costs is dragging the world to the brink of yet another World Wide War.

Responsible people would always question such things.

Names Of The Nameless

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
We don’t have any NAMED source whose reputation is attached to CLAIMING that it was Iranians.

From the source article:

Iraq's state-run al-Sabah newspaper on Saturday quoted the government spokesmen Ali al-Dabbagh as saying that the Iraqi Security Council has "stressed that the incident is a violation to Iraq's sovereignty and territories and called upon Iran to pull out its troops from the well."

From AlSabah.com:

He said government spokesman Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement received "morning," a copy of the National Security Council held an emergency meeting yesterday, chaired by the commander of the armed forces to discuss the situation regarding the issue of penetration of the Iranian armed group, the Iraqi border in Maysan province, as the Council heard the position of the current border Minister concerned.

At the very least, it would seem Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh is claiming it was Iranians, thus attaching his reputation to said claim, and apparently the Iraq National Security Council seems to think there's enough to this to take action as well.

The article gives additional details about the alleged incident.

There is no evidence that the Iranians seized the well. (There is no proof of the event other than claims by Iraqi government officials and no there has been no admission by Iran.)

Thus this is a case of the Iraqi government's word vs. Iran's.



Which means all we really have left to look at is motive, which is why this event baffles me.

Iran is trying to buy time to complete it's nuclear program. Doing anything else to provoke the west will only increase the likelihood of a U.S. or Israeli strike.

This should be the last thing Iran wants.

Therefore either someone in Iran has made a gigantic mistake or this is just another Gleiwitz incident

I believe it's the latter.


Edit: Then again it could be an irked U.S. oil company that feels left out.

See this ATS thread... U.S. Companies Shut Out as Iraq Auctions Its Oil Fields

[edit on 19-12-2009 by Studious]

Context Or Pretext

Originally posted by Studious
Therefore either someone in Iran has made a gigantic mistake or this is just another Gleiwitz incident

Well, I can say the first thing that crossed my mind when I heard about this was "What, Poland has attacked Germany already?"

The problem in this case is that the recent history between Iran and Iraq makes cross-border incursions on the part of either side more credible than the state of affairs between Germany and Poland before WWII (although there was considerable strife between those two countries on border issues as well).

Several areas along the Iran-Iraq border remain subjects of contention between the two states, including this one, apparently.

Whether this particular incident does, in fact, involve an Iranian incursion remains to be established. Iraq alleges it has happened, and Iran denies it.

Hopefully, more details and evidence supporting one side or the other will become available.

Until then, speculation abounds.

reply to post by Majic


Edit:

I guess you're right apparently these incursions happen quite frequently. It's odd that this one received so much more attention than the others.

A senior engineer from Maysan Oil Company, which operates the field, said Iranian troops had taken temporary control of one of the field's seven wells, an inoperative well in a disputed border area, four or five times this year.

(Emphasis mine.)

Source: Reuters Article

[edit on 19-12-2009 by Studious]

Update:
Oil company denies Iran occupying Iraq oil well (2nd Roundup)

It was a false flag it seems, perpetrated of course by western operatives or israelis.


Why would Iran do what is being alleged... its completely ridiculous, but the American public will buy it of course.

reply to post by Unplugged


That was my first impression but I found that (according to the Iraqi government) this has occurred four or five times over just the last year.

A senior engineer from Maysan Oil Company, which operates the field, said Iranian troops had taken temporary control of one of the field's seven wells, an inoperative well in a disputed border area, four or five times this year.

(Emphasis mine.)

Source: Reuters Article

If the raids have occured this frequently I believe the Iranians might have taken the oil well thinking it wouldn't recieve any more attention then the other times they've seized it.

However it is odd that the media has decided to hype this particular seizure if it happens that often.

[edit on 19-12-2009 by Studious]

Whats scary is how fast the false flags are now coming in . Its only about what ? a week since the uncorroborated story in the Times about Iran wanting nuclear triggers .

Its patently obvious Israel are now ready to move and are simply preparing the groundwork .
heads up guys , it`s here .