The Iraqi foreign ministry officially acknowledged that the Iranian regime steals from the shared oil fields between the two neighbors.
An official letter of complaint was also delivered to the mullahs’ embassy in Baghdad regarding the dispute, reported the official daily Al-Sabah.
"Iranians have taken over 15 oil wells in Tayeb area in southern Iraqi Province of Mesan," said, Mohammad Al-Haj Hamoud, deputy Iraqi foreign minister.
"To solve the dispute, Iraq has written a number of letters to Iranian officials with no avail," added the minister in a press conference in Baghdad on Monday.
Speaking to Radio Sawa, Al-Haj Hamoud added, "Iran has violated international accords by preventing the Iraqi technicians from working on the wells. We have sent a number of memorandums to the Iranian officials regarding the matter. However we have refrained from publishing them. It has been our request from the Iranian side to form a committee to solve the differences over the oil wells."
"The Iraqi foreign ministry has summoned Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad to discuss the problem. But he has been avoiding the issue altogether," said Al-Haj Hamoud.
The international Al-Zaman reflected Abdul-Karim Laibee, Iraq’s inspector general with the Oil Ministry, as saying that the Iranian regime pumps out Iraq’s oil from the shared oil fields and sells it at international markets without having any signed agreements with Iraq as how to drill or divide the revenues.
On April 19, 2006, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi President-elect of the Iranian Resistance in a meeting with a group of Euro MPs and Belgian lawmakers unveiled for the first time the stealing of Iraqi oil by the clerical regime. "In one of the biggest heists of the current century, the mullahs have smuggled more than 20 billion dollars worth of Iraqi oil to Iran through Iraq’s southern borders. To this end, the ruling dictatorship has divided the southern oil rich region among its affiliated groupings that are entrusted with patrolling those regions and oil facilities. This has given them free reins to plunder Iraq’s oil. To do this, they use police cars and uniforms. The stolen oil, up to 500,000 barrels a day, provides for the huge expenditures their meddling in Iraq entails," said Mrs. Rajavi.