According to the reports, Iranian troops have crossed into Iraqi Kurdistan and built a fortified base, one of several recent military incursions as Iraq struggles to form a government amid efforts by Tehran to ensure that a pro-Iranian Shiite alliance takes power.

Another area of contention is the disputed oil-rich Maysan border region in southeastern Iraq.

It has been also reported that the Iraqi government last month signed a 20-year production contract with a Chinese-Turkish consortium to develop a cluster of three oil fields there that contains the equivalent of 2.6 billion barrels of oil and which both states claim as their own.

A unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps occupied an oil well in the Fakka field for two weeks in December, widely seen as a show of force along the poorly defined border.

The reported also noted that it's even less defined further north in Kurdistan. Iraq's Kurdish minority has a semi-autonomous enclave there where Iranian Kurdish separatists of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, have bases.

35-40 Iranian troops crossed the border pursuing PEJAK rebels June 2 and set up a base around the mountain village of Perdunaz, 1 mile inside Iraq, said Iraqi officials.

Iranian artillery had been shelling PEJAK positions for several days before the incursion and further incursions are likely to remind Baghdad who's boss. (With Inputs from Agencies)