The Iran-UAE Gulf islands dispute : a journey through international law, history and politics

Ключевые слова

Тематические рубрики

• Politics - Foreign Policy - International Relations
• Islands - Law and legislation
• Abu Musa - International status
• Tunb Islands - International status
• Persian Gulf Region - Politics and government
• Iran - Foreign relations - United Arab Emirates
• United Arab Emirates - Foreign relations - Iran

Аннотация

Among the various conflicts that beset the Middle East, there is one in particular that has faded from view in contemporary international politics: sovereignty over three Gulf Islands—Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb. These ‘outposts’ in the Gulf have, for centuries, allegedly belonged to either Persia or the Emirate Kingdoms and their modern-day successor states. The Gulf Islands sit in the middle of the historical rivalry between Persia and the Arabian peninsula which continues to this day. It has even affected what the body of water in the region is called. Thus, even if history and state practice over the centuries have supported a reference to the region as the ‘Persian Gulf’, this is not acceptable to some who embraced a campaign that began in the 1950s to dilute the power of Iran in the region and simply refer to the contentious sea as the ‘Arabian Gulf’. This naming issue hints at some of the larger problems around the sovereignty of the Gulf Islands—who do they belong to, Iran or the United Arab Emirates (UAE)?