The border flare-up kicked off a storm of emergency meetings and bilateral phone calls, with Baghdad calling for an immediate withdrawal yet also seeking to contain damage to its important relationship with neighboring Iran.<\/font><\/p>\n In a phone conversation on Saturday evening, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari underlined the need for a meeting of officials "with the intention of enforcing bilateral border agreements<\/strong>," Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported.<\/font><\/p>\n On Friday, global oil prices climbed following media reports that the Iranian troops had commandeered a well<\/strong> at the field southeast of Baghdad.<\/font><\/p>\n The two countries have a long history of border feuds, including one that escalated into a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s. The relationship warmed after 2003, when fellow Shi’ite Muslims took over in Baghdad and the countries’ trade and religious tourism ties began to deepen\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <Reuters<\/a>><\/p>\n Fortunately the incursion was not as severe as I had originally read. I thought Iran had taken over an oil field, not just a single well. Nevertheless, there is still reason for concern here, because any instability could delay the further withdrawal of US troops in Iraq who desperately need to come home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the time the news of the invasion surfaced yesterday, I had already completed my daily research so I missed the initial report of the invasion. "The Iranian flag has been lowered. The Iranian troops have pulled back 50 meters, but they have not gone back to where they were before. The Iraqi government asked […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IraqInvaded\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/IranWithdrawingTroopsfromIraq_193C\/IraqInvaded.jpg\" "\\"IraqInvaded\\"")
<\/a> "The Iranian flag has been lowered. The Iranian troops have pulled back 50 meters, but they have not gone back to where they were before. The Iraqi government asked for the troops to go back to where they were," Dabbagh said.<\/font><\/p>\n