RUPEE NEWS: Recording History, Narrating Archives, Strategic Intellibrief Analysis: Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | новости рупии | 卢比新闻 | Rupi Nyheter | ルピーニュース | اخبار روپیہ

The Iran-UAE dispute being exacerbated as a prelude to the attack on Iran and Pakistan. The US is facing defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. Will the NATO forces use smoke and mirrors to divert the attention of the Europeans and the Americans. Increasingly the populace in the West is questioning the perpetual mimetic wars in the Greater Middle East. The attack on the Gulf of Tonkin was used as an excuse to attack Vietnam. Will the same play book be used for an attack on Iran or Pakistan?

The border disputes between the UAEand Iran are are being exacerbated as a prelude to the attack on Pakistan. A huge media drive is being waged about Iran’s bomb and the Arab Salafist and Wahabi forces that are supposedly wanting to take over the planet. The UAE is a shining example of modern Muslim development which should not be held hostage to a few islands and enemy machinationsto destroy both Iran and the UAE. This has happened before. The decade long war between Iran and Iraq devastated both countries. When that was not enough Iraq was invaded directly and now Iran is in the cross hairs.

Iran is a huge country. It must be magnanimous to the UEA on a few islands in the Gulf. The UEA brings hopes and dreams to the Muslim world. The UAE has shown the world what Muslims can do. This dispute has to buried deep in the seabed of the Gulf, and the three islands built up like Dubai–a testimony to cooperation and Muslim ingenuity!

The Strait of Hurmuz is ths choke point for the Gulf. Any attack on Iran or Pakistan will impact the traffic in the Gulf. A few missiles or tankers sunk in the area will stop all oil from the Gulf and push the oil prices to more than $250 per barrell and possibly towards $500 per barrel.

UAE rejects Iranian stance on disputed islands

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates protested on Tuesday against Iran’s dismissal of a three-decade territorial dispute as a “misunderstanding”, saying the Islamic Republic was occupying its islands in the strategic Gulf.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseinisaid on Sunday that there was no need for any mediation over the islands, saying if there was any “misunderstanding between the countries it will be resolved through bilateral talks”. The three islands – the Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa – are controlled by Iran but claimed by the UAE with broad Arab support. “It seems the Iranian side does not want to understand,” a UAEForeign Ministry official said.

“There is no ‘misunderstanding’ between us but an actual occupation. There is no occupied land more sacred than any other. Occupation is occupation whether it is by Israel or Iran or any other country.” An Arab League summit in March pledged support for the UAE, calling for a peaceful resolution to the dispute in the Gulf, a crucial outlet for world crude oil supply, which it said would help improve relations between the Arab world and Iran. reuters

Abu Musa and the Tumbs: The Dispute That Won’t Go Away, Part One

On June 3, the Foreign Ministers of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states ended their meeting in Jidda, Saudi Arabia by calling on Iran to submit the dispute over Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tumbislands to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. This was not particularly newsworthy because the GCChas long urged an international settlement of the dispute over the three islands occupied by Iran and claimed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a GCC member. But the Iranian and UAE Foreign Ministers reportedly discussed the issue at an Islamic Conference meeting in Doha, Qatar, in May, for the first time in several years. And the new GCC resolution was the latest in a series of such calls for a settlement in the wake of the ICJ’s successful resolution of the even-older dispute between Bahrain and Qatar (See the two-part Dossier, “The Bahrain-Qatar Border Dispute: The World Court Decision” in The Estimate for March 23 and April 6, 2001), as well as other breakthroughs in longstanding Gulf border quarrels, such as the Saudi-Yemeni border treaty last year (See the Dossier, “The Yemeni-Saudi Treaty” in The Estimate for June 30, 2000.

The three disputed islands are a different matter, and the dispute, the modern incarnation of which marks its 30th anniversary this year, has provenfar more intractable than other border quarrels. One reason is the strategic location of the islands astride the shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz; this potentialmilitary value overlays and enhances other incentives, such as the question of offshore oil in the islands’ territoriallimits and the prestige element of dynastic claims, which have been part of almost all Gulf boundary disputes. The fact that Iran has been in virtual possession since 1991, despite nominally sharing Abu Musa with the UAE Emirate of Sharja since 1971, has also given Iran little reason to press for a resolution.

The Estimate has not looked in detail at the three islands since 1992 (See the Dossier in The Estimate for October 9, 1992), when the last real crisis flared up there after Iran sought to bar third-party expatriate labor from the Sharja-controlled part of the island. With the islands dispute now one of the very last outstanding border disputes in the region, this Dossier provides a recap and update. Part One looks at the issue through the Iranian occupation of 1971, and Part Two in the next issue (on the timing of which, see announcement), examines the period since.

As islands, go, they are not very prepossessing; until it became a geopolitical football Lesser Tumb had no resident population at all, except for the occasional fisherman or pearl diver who put ashore there, and Greater Tumb and Abu Musa are unlikely to become vacation spots, being mostly known for fishing and (on Abu Musa) the mining of red oxide. But if, as realtors say, the three things that count in a property are location, location, and location, the three Gulf islands have it all. The map on the next page shows that fact clearly: Abu Musa, the largest and the only one with an airport, lies to the south of the main shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz; Iranian control and Iranian military positions there are thus straddling the West’s oil lifeline. The Tumbs lie between the eastbound and westbound tanker lanes. (The Estimateuses the spelling Tumb, which reflects the Arabic pronunciation of the word; it is literally spelled Tunb, though the rules of Arabic pronunciation turn “n” before “b” into a “mb” sound. Iran usually spells the name Tonb, reflecting the Farsi pronunciation. The Estimate’s choice of an Arabic transliteration is not intended as a judgment of the issues between the parties.)

This strategic location has been a fundamental element in the dispute from its earliest days on the eve of British departure, and remains the reason the dispute continues to draw attention today. In a dangerous neighborhood like the Gulf, any fight over the fencelines is of internationalinterest, but withthe islands located where they are, the dispute is particularly touchy for the international community.

The other main irritants in any Gulf dispute, oil and national pride, are of course present, but oil was not discovered off Abu Musa with certainty until about 1972, after Iran had already moved to take the islands.

As withalmost any Gulf territorial dispute, the two sides can each cite numerous precedents and evidence to prove that the islands are rightfully theirs. Iran points to historical links between the islands and the Iranian city of Lengeh and the island of Qeshm, while the Emirates point to the Arabic-speaking character of the population and historical links to the ruling families of Sharja and Ras al-Khaima, the two Emirates with claims in the islands.

Ironically, these very connections are part of the historical root of the problem. In the 18th century and the rise of the Arab tribe of the Qawasim on the Arabian shore of the Gulf, and their subsequent expansion across the Gulf to Iran. Branches of the Qawasim (singular Qasimi, also pronounced Jawasim, Jasimiin the localdialect) still rule in both Sharja and Ras al-Khaima. As the Qawasim power increased, they took control not only of the islands, but of nearby Sirri Island as well, and of the Iranian port of Bandar-e Lengeh. Later, Lengeh was returned to Iran (in 1880) as was Sirri (in 1887), but the Qawasim continued to claim Abu Musa and the Tumbs.

When the British established the “Trucial” system, the three islands were ruled from the Qawasim base at Sharja. Early in the 20th Century, Sharja and Ras al-Khaima became independent of each other under different branches of the Qasimi family, and from that time Ras al-Khaima claimed the Tunbs and Sharja Abu Musa.

Iran always maintained a claim, insisting that the Qawasim domination of the island had come after centuries of Iranian control and at a time of Iranian weakness, and it usually included the islands in one or more mainland-based administrative districts, usually Lengeh or Qeshm. But several times during the British period it reportedly proposed acknowledging British/Sharja sovereignty over Abu Musa in exchange for Iranian control of Greater Tunb, which was closer to Iran and (until the mid-20th Century at least) seemed of greater importance to the Iranians. But the early years of the 20thCentury saw a series of claims, counterclaims, and assertions of control typicalof this sort of Gulf territorial dispute.

Iran had retaken Sirri in 1887, without major British objection. But when Iranian customs officers landed on all three islands in 1904 and raised the Iranian flag, Sharja asked for and received British intervention and Iran backed down.

Meanwhile Sharja had granted a concession for the mining of red oxide on Abu Musa in 1898, and the Arab concession holders eventually sold the concession to a German company in 1907. Britain removed the Germans on the eve of World War I, and the dispute was voided by the war.

Also in 1913 Britain built a lighthouse on Greater Tumb, and in the 1920s acknowledged Ras al-Khaima as independent of Sharja, with Sharja accepting Ras al-Khaima’s control of the Tumbs. (Another emirate, Umm al-Qaywayn, disputed the offshore territorial limits claimed for Abu Musa by Sharja, further complicating the local disputes.)

In 1923 Iran revived the issue and in 1928, after an incident between Iran and Dubai, Britain made an effort to resolve the issue, offering to acknowledge Sirri as Iranian in exchange for recognition of Arab control of Abu Musa and the Tumbs(in other words, acknowledging what was effectively actual control). A 1920 draft treaty was never ratified; Iran reportedly wanted at least Greater Tumb in exchange for acknowledging Sharja’s control of Abu Musa.

In 1930, Iran offered to rent the two main islands for 50 years, which would have recognized Sharja’s and Ras al-Khaima’ssovereignty but given Iran actual control. The Ruler of Ras al-Khaima declined to lower his flag under any circumstances.

In 1934 Reza Shah sent Iranian officials to Tumb. Britain expressed concern. The Ruler of Ras al-Khaima asked Britain to pay rent for the lighthouse on Greater Tumb. When he apparently implied he might transfer it to Iran if Britain did not comply, the British threatened to recognize the island as Sharja’s instead. Ras al-Khaima backed down. The following year Britain granted a new concession for the red oxide mines on Abu Musa to a British firm, over Iranians resident in Dubai. Iran protested.

Normally, in the decolonizing era, colonialboundaries were treated as sacrosanct for the post-colonialstates, with newly independent states recognizing that all would be vulnerable to irredentism if those boundaries were questioned. The Gulf is a somewhat different case, however, than Africa for example: most of the Gulf states were under British protection, but were not colonies; their boundaries were not always clearly demarcated, because in the pre-oil era localrulers had little concern about who controlled barren desert or empty sea. With the coming of oil, things changed, and the Buraimi dispute of the 1950s between Saudi Arabia and (British-protected) Oman and Abu Dhabi may be seen as the beginning of a new era.

But all these disputes had certain elements in common. Pre-oil eastern Arabia and pre-oil Iran were bothheavily tribalin their organization (especially the parts of Iran near the southern coast), and localcoasting economies were dependent on pearl-diving, fishing and a limited amount of other trade, including the gold trade withIndia. The smaller Gulf islands were used by fishermen and pearl divers, had links to one or the other shore or both, and little attention was paid to what a more modern concept of the nation-state would call sovereignty. These kinds of relationships allow both sides to find evidence supporting the idea that the islands were part of their own domain. That they had links to Sharja and Ras al-Khaima, and an Arabic-speaking population, seems clear; but that they also had links with the Lengeh region on the Iranian coast also seems to be true.

The recent ICJ decision in the Bahrain-Qatar case relied, as noted in the Dossiers cited earlier, gave a great deal of weight (in fact, in some cases, all of the weight) to decisions made during the British protectorate era. That may have given the GCC further impetus for trying to get the case to the World Court, since the British unquestionably treated Abu Musa and the Tumbs as part of the future UAE: Abu Musa under the administration of Sharja and the Tumbs under that of Ras al-Khaima.

1971: Iran’s Move

In January of 1968, the British government announced that it would withdraw British forces from east of Suez by the end of 1971. That decision was, in many ways, the beginning of the modern era in Gulf affairs; the retreat of the RoyalNavy and British protection changed the strategic balance and helped bring the US directly into Gulf security issues. It also set off a great deal of maneuvering among the soon-to-be-independent states themselves, and by Iran and Iraq, the two regionalpowers concerned with the region.

The Shah of Iran was already embarked at the time on an expansion of Iran’s regional power-projection capabilities, an effort that he continued until overthrown in 1979. Iran also had a longstanding claim to the entire Bahrain island group, which, in the runup to Gulf independence, the Shah agreed to drop. Iran, however, insisted that Abu Musa and the Tumbswere historically Iranian, and that Iran’s security required control of them; it was argued that control by the Emirates had been gained through British colonial power and the weakness (at the time) of Iran. In February of 1971, the Shah announced that he would act “by force if necessary” to secure the islands, and as 1971 went on, Iran rejected suggestions of a lease and insisted on full sovereignty. Both Iran and Britain published various old documents and maps to support their positions.

Iran also argued, perhaps withsome effect in Western chanceries at the time, that the fragmented, tribalemirates of the Arab side of the Gulf would be unstable and that the islands might become staging grounds for radical revolutionary movements. It needs to be remembered that this idea did not sound as ludicrous in 1970-71 as it does today; 1970 saw “Black September” in Jordan and the height of Palestnian airline hijackings; South Yemen had recently become the Arab world’s only Marxist-Leninist state and Oman was fighting a difficult insurgency in Dhofar. Although oil wealth was already flowing into Abu Dhabiand Dubai, the overwhelming wealthwhich would follow the oil price revolution of 1973-74 was still unforeseen. And Iran was widely perceived as both stable and unwaveringly pro-Western.

In this context, Iran was prepared to insist upon control of the islands; the Shah also appears to have felt that he was owed something for giving up Iran’s longstanding claim to Bahrain.

As the year went on, British SpecialRepresentative Sir William Luce reportedly told both Sharja and Ras al-Khaima that Britain would not confront Iran over the islands, and suggested that they cut their own best deals. Sheikh Saqr of Ras al-Khaimarefused to deal; his cousin Sheikh Khalid of Sharjabegan talks with Iran. Sharja had not then discovered oil and was about to lose its role as administrative center of the Trucial States to Abu Dhabi, which would be the capital of the new UAE.

As the December 1 British withdrawal approached, Sharja and Iran reached an agreement on November 29 — the very eve of withdrawal — under which Sharja agreed that Iran could station troops on Abu Musa, and that the two countries would share offshore oil and oil revenues. Technically, however, neither side gave up its claim to full sovereignty of the island; but effectively, the agreement was for a partition. The Iranian garrison would fly the Iranian flag and have “full jurisdiction”, though sovereignty was not mentioned; Iran and Sharjaagreed to 12 mile territorial limits and agreed that, if oil was discovered (as it was the following year), Iran would take 50%, Sharja 35%, and Umm al-Qaywain 15%.

On November 30, the day after the agreement and the day before the UAE formally came into being, Iranian forces landed on Abu Musaunder the agreement with Sharja. But they also landed on Greater and Lesser Tumb.

The Ruler of Ras al-Khaimahad not reached any accommodation with the Iranians; the Iranian military occupation of the Tumbs was therefore not done under any claim of internatonal agreement, as that of Abu Musa had been.

The newly born UAE strongly protested, and Britain and the US criticized the move, but did nothing to reverse it. One need not see any conspiracy to acknowledge that Iranian control of the islands at a time when Iran was pro-Western and the future of the small Gulf states uncertain at best was not all that disturbing to the West. Certainly many Gulf Arabs believe that Britain chose to look the other way.

In Part Two: The Dispute from 1971 to the Present

Abu Musa and the Tumbs: The Dispute That Won’t Go Away, Part Two

Because of The Estimate’s recent hiatus during your Editor’s travel (See the announcement), Part I of this Dossier appeared in the issue of June 15, 2001. This is the conclusion.

Since Iran’s occupation of the three islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tumb in 1971 (See Part I), the dispute has been a persisting one, though one which largely was ignored (outside of the United Arab Emirates) during most of the 1970s. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war which broke out in 1980 changed that, and the islands became a broader issue in the Gulf region and the Arab world.

In general, the status quo has prevailed except for the events of 1992, to be discussed below, when Iran took greater control over Abu Musa. The UAE has consistently called for international involvement in the issue and for referral to the International Court of Justice, but Iran has steadfastly resisted any change in its de facto control of the islands.

While the islands issue is not yet – quite – the last outstanding Gulf territorial dispute, it is the most intractable. While Iran has from time to time been willing to discuss the issue (and that only on occasion), it has been unwilling to concede sovereignty in any degree. The exact status of the joint agreement with Sharja, made in 1971, over control of Abu Musa has remained somewhat ambiguous since the Iranian moves of 1992, though Iran has not formally abrogated it.

The Arab world at least nominally supports the Emirates claim, with both the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab League regularly backing the UAE. Sometimes the Emirates has found its allies a bit too eager to improve ties with Iran without any progress on the islands – it openly criticized Saudi Arabia for its hastiness in imrproving ties with Tehran a few years ago – but for all the GCC states the Arab identity of the islands has become accepted dogma.

As for the rest of the world, there has been a gradual evolution. The United States and Britain were widely believed in the Gulf to have acquiesced in the Iranian takeover in 1971, seeing Iran as a stable and pro-Western regime in an uncertain and changing region. The Iranian Revolution changed the equation, however, and by the 1990s the West was concerned about the Iranian military buildup on Abu Musa and its potential threat to Gulf tanker traffic.

But the islands do not seem to be a high priority in Western security planners’ scenarios. Since they are effectively controlled by Iran, the only likely shift in the status quo would be a UAE effort to seize them by force, and given the present balance of forces in the region, that is highly unlikely. Over a longer period such a scenario might occur if a stronger Arab ally – a resurgent Iraq for example, or a Saudi Arabia with a different force structure from that at present – proved willing to challenge Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq made recovery of the islands one of its stated war aims, and this led to strong UAE support for Iraq, but nothing of course came of it.

So the islands dispute remains, the one intractable outstanding territorial dispute in the Gulf, and the one that shows the least likelihood of imminent resolution.

As noted in Part I of this Dossier, the United Kingdom had already made clear to the future United Arab Emirates that it was not about to intervene militarily to protect the claims by Sharja and Ras al-Khaima to the islands at the time of its withdrawal from east of Suez in 1971. Sharja cut the best deal it could get with Iran – an agreement to accept an Iranian presence on Abu Musa with neither side yielding its claim to total sovereignty – while Ras al-Khaima refused to deal and Iran simply occupied the Tumbs.

While Britain and the United States both criticized the Iranian occupation, neither was prepared to act in any way, and there is some reason to credit the widespread belief in the Gulf that the two powers were not that sorry to see a supposedly dependable and pro-Western Iran occupy islands in a crucial location in mid-Gulf, when many doubted the longterm survivability of the tribal monarchies of the Arab Gulf states.

It was a different world in 1971, a world of inexpensive oil and a powerful Iran under a Shah determined to make Iran the major regional power. The newly independent states of the Arab Gulf shared the peninsula with Marxist-Leninist South Yemen, and Oman was in the midst of combating a bloody and lengthy insurgency in Dhofar – one that eventually took Iranian military assistance to defeat. In an era when radical Palestinians had been carrying out hijackings and other attacks across the region (Black September of 1970 had been the year before), the Shah was fond of portraying a Gulf in which a radical, Aden-style regime took over the smaller Gulf states and the islands controlling Gulf tanker traffic came under radical control. That the region evolved in a very different direction is obvious now, but there were those at the time who thought that Iran might be the more reliable ally in controlling the islands.

The oil price revolution of 1973 and after of course transformed the Arab Gulf in ways that few foresaw in 1971. Throughout the 1970s, however, there was little incentive for the outside world to object to the Iranian occupation of the islands: the Emirates, of course, protested loudly and regularly, but Iran was a crucial Western ally, one of the “twin pillars” of US policy in the Gulf (with Saudi Arabia), and so the islands issue receded from view, except in the Emirates.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the same year, and the Iran-Iraq war which broke out in 1980 turned the region on its head. Suddenly Iran was hostile to the West, Soviet forces were moving into Southwestern Asia, American hostages were being held in Tehran and then, Iran and Iraq began an eight-year war which threatened the oilfields and the tanker lanes.

Iraq, which had long been positioning itself as leader of the Arab Gulf states (a position the others were not willing to concede), announced early in its war with Iran that one of its war aims was the recovery of the “Arab” islands of Abu Musa and the Tumbs from Iran. The Ruler of Ras al-Khaima was quick to openly support Iraq, and the UAE, as well as the other Gulf Arab states, gave moral and financial support to the Iraqis.

Out of this transformed situation came the emergence in 1981 of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), consisting of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman: six hereditary monarchies of varying sizes, all with a common interest in protecting the oil lanes against dangers posed by the war between Iran and Iraq. The preoccupation of Iraq with the war made it possible for the six states to create their own grouping excluding Iraq, which otherwise would surely have demanded a (leading) place at the table. The GCC soon became a strong supporter of its member the UAE in the latter’s claim to the islands.

None of this, of course, affected Iran’s position. In fact, though the Shah had in part asserted his claim to the islands as his due for dropping Iran’s historic claim to Bahrain, revolutionary Iran actually toyed with the idea of reviving the Bahraini claim as well (though it soon backed away from that idea).

There was no major change in the status quo in the years immediately after the Iranian Revolution, almost certainly because, of course, the status quo clearly favored Iran. The next major development came in 1992, and some mysteries still surround those events.

The 1992 Crisis
In April of 1992, reports began to circulate in the Gulf that Iran had closed an Arabic language school on Abu Musa and was expelling Arabs from the island. At first the UAE made no public charges, but as reports continued to proliferate Iranian Foreign Minister ‘Ali Akbar Velayati denied that any schools had been closed, and also that any UAE nationals had been expelled, but said that third party nationals – Arabs not from Sharja and not covered by the 1971 agreement – had to leave the island. At the same time, reports circulated of new Iranian military measures on the island, an increase in the garrison, and even deployment of surface-to-air missiles to Abu Musa.

As 1992 progressed, the UAE’s charges became more open, and reports said that Iran had annexed Abu Musa, abrogating the 1971 agreement with Sharja, and taking full control of the island. The UAE clearly considered that Iran had altered the status quo and in effect annexed the island. The Iranians have never acknowledged doing this.

In fact, one of several things that makes the 1992 events hard to fathom is the fact that the two sides still present those events so differently that it is not entirely clear what really did happen. For the UAE, Iran in effect claimed full sovereignty over Abu Musa and – though a Sharja presence was never eliminated – violated the 1971 agreement.

Iran, however, has never acknowledged doing that. Insofar as its position can be summarized, it is that 1) Abu Musa has always been Iranian and Iran has never diluted its claim to full sovereignty; but 2) it has continued to respect the rights of Sharja citizens as agreed in the 1971 accord, and has only insisted that other Arabs cannot reside on the island without Iranian permission. As for military presence, it considers Abu Musa Iranian territory and does not consider itself barred from deploying defensive weaponry there.

The UAE has, since 1992, essentially complained that Iran has violated the 1971 agreement, but has not forced the issue to the point that Iran might actually bar Sharja citizens permitted on the island under that agreement. Given the amount of heat generated by the islands dispute to this day, it is curiously difficult to get a clear picture of exactly what the status of the Sharja population on the island is. And the sharing of oil revenues agreed to in 1971 apparently continued without interruption.

Given the fact that the two sides disagree about what happened in 1992, it is not surprising that there are several explanations of why whatever it was that happened, happened.

The most obvious clue is the timing: the year after Desert Storm. The United States had moved into the Gulf militarily to an unprecedented degree, and the UAE was one of its major allies in the region, providing ports for the US Navy and, during the war, air bases. In addition the “Damascus Declaration” had committed Egypt and Syria to the defense of the Gulf. Though the Damascus Declaration was never really implemented, it caused some alarm in Tehran at the time.

During the summer of 1992, Iran carried out a number of amphibious exercises in the Gulf and clearly sought to send the message that it did not accept the new US hegemony in the region; at the same time it built up its defenses on Abu Musa.

Thus the likeliest explanation for what seemed to be a shift in the status quo was an Iranian response to the new US position; the fact that Iran denies that it has abrogated or violated the 1971 agreement adds to the complexity of interpreting the 1992 events.

Further fogging the issue were rumors – apparently spread by Iran or Iran’s supporters – suggesting that there was some secret provision in the 1971 agreement providing that Abu Musa would become fully Iranian after 21 years, and that Iran was simply enforcing this secret provision. This is not only denied by the UAE, but makes very little sense: why would Sharja have agreed to such a provision? Nor has Iran ever openly suggested any such agreement: this is one of those will-o’-the-wisp rumors that is impossible to nail down.

Iran’s buildup of military force on Abu Musa, however, was not ignored by the United States. From the beginning the US has recused itself from taking any formal position on the sovereignty of the islands, and it did formally criticize the unilateral Iranian action on the Tumbs back in 1971 (though seemingly at the time without much conviction). But the location of Abu Musa between the main tanker channels is militarily critical, and the presence of SAMs and, by some reports, anti-shipping missiles on the island as well could threaten US naval elements in the Gulf. Without openly supporting the UAE claim, the US has supported a peaceful resolution of the dispute.

Since 1992, the UAE, the GCC, and the Arab League have regularly complained about Iran’s unwillingness to discuss the islands dispute. On occasion, Iranian Foreign Ministers or lesser diplomats have agreed to talk, but have never had substantive discussions: Iran insists the islands are Iranian, and while claiming that it still respects its 1971 agreement with Sharja (which, as we have seen, is not the way the UAE sees it), also insists there is really nothing to talk about.

More and more, the UAE and the GCC have pressed for involvement by the International Court of Justice (The World Court). But the ICJ generally will only deal with territorial disputes if both sides agree to its jurisdiction. It had never addressed any of the many Gulf territorial disputes until the Bahrain-Qatar dispute, which became its longest case. (On the Court’s decision there, see the Dossiers in The Estimate for March 23 and April 6, 2001.) Ironically, the fact that the ICJ did take and decide that case, and that its decision has been accepted by Bahrain and Qatar, may help guarantee that Iran will never agree to go to The Hague. For the Court ultimately decided sovereignty based on British colonial-era boundaries and decisions. And no one disputes the fact that during the British colonial era, Abu Musa and the Tumbs were Arab, and belonged to Sharja and Ras al-Khaima. On the Bahrain-Qatar precedent, Iran would probably lose.

And Iran really has no incentive to seek such a decision. It controls the islands. A UAE military attack against the islands is not credible in the present balance of power in the region, though it might be someday if a strong Arab ally supported the move. In the meantime, the dispute remains the last and most intractable Gulf territorial dispute, but one which continues to affect Iranian-Arab relations across the Gulf, and which simply refuses to go away.