This article deals with
territorial disputeA territorial dispute is a disagreement over the possession/control of land between two or more states, or over the possession or control of land by one state after it has conquered it from a former state no longer currently recognized by the occupying power....
s between
statesA sovereign state is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state...
of in and around the
Persian GulfThe Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes controversially referred to as the Arabian Gulf by most Arab states or simply The...
in Southwestern Asia. These states include
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
,
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
,
KuwaitThe State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab emirate bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and Iraq to the north and west. The greatest distance from north to south is 200 km and from east to west 170 km . The name is a diminutive of an Arabic word meaning "fortress built near water." It has a...
,
Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south...
,
BahrainThe Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain via the King Fahd Causeway, which was officially opened on the 25th of November 1986. Qatar is to the southeast across the Gulf of...
,
QatarQatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally ', is an Arab emirate in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the larger Arabian Peninsula...
, the
United Arab EmiratesThe United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman and Saudi Arabia. The UAE consists of seven states, termed emirates, which are Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain, Ras...
(UAE), and
OmanOman , officially the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab country in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It borders the United Arab Emirates on the northwest, Saudi Arabia on the west and Yemen on the southwest....
.
Background
Before the oil era, the Persian Gulf states made little effort to delineate their territories. Members of
Arab tribeArabs are a semitic people, descending from various Old North Arabian tribes.Much of the lineage provided before Ma'ad relies on biblical genealogy and therefore its accuracy from that link uses the bible as a genealogical historical record...
s felt loyalty to their tribe or shaykh and tended to roam across the Arabian desert according to the needs of their flocks. Official boundaries meant little, and the concept of allegiance to a distinct political unit was absent. Organized authority was confined to ports and
oasesIn geography, an oasis or cienega is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source...
. The delineation of borders began with the signing of the first
oilPetroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid found in rock formations in the Earth consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds.The term "petroleum" was first used in the treatise De Natura Fossilium, published in...
concessions in the 1930s. The national boundaries had been defined by the
BritishThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was...
, but many of these borders were never properly demarcated, leaving opportunities for contention, especially in areas of the most valuable oil deposits. Until 1971, British-led forces maintained peace and order in the gulf, and British officials arbitrated local quarrels. After the withdrawal of these forces and officials, old territorial claims and suppressed tribal animosities rose to the surface. The concept of the modern state—introduced into the Persian Gulf region by the European powers—and the sudden importance of boundaries to define ownership of oil deposits kindled acute territorial disputes.
Iranian claims on Bahrain
Iran has often laid claim to Bahrain, based on its seventeenth-century defeat of the
PortugueseThe Portuguese Empire was the first global empire in history, with territories in South America, Africa, India and South East Asia...
and its subsequent occupation of the Bahrain archipelago. The Arab clan of the Al Khalifa, which has been the ruling family of Bahrain since the eighteenth century, in turn pushed out the Iranians in 1780. The last
shahShah is a Persian term for a king that has been adopted in many other languages.-Word history:"Shāh" was the title of Iranian kings including the Achaemenid dynasty which unified Persia and created a vast intercontinental empire...
of Iran,
Mohammad Reza PahlaviMohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, , was the emperor of Iran from 16 September 1941, until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, raised the Bahrain question when the British withdrew from areas east of the
Suez CanalThe Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened on November 1869, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa...
, but he dropped his demand after a 1970
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
-sponsored
plebisciteA referendum , ballot question, or plebiscite is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal...
showed that Bahrainis overwhelmingly preferred independence to Iranian hegemony. The religious leaders of the
Iranian RevolutionThe Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution...
revived the claim to Bahrain primarily on the grounds that the majority of Bahrainis were Shia
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
s. Iranian secular leaders subsequently renounced the claim in an attempt to establish better relations with Bahrain.
Iran and the United Arab Emirates
In 1971, Iranian forces occupied the islands of
Abu MusaAbu Musa is a 12-km² island in the eastern Persian Gulf, part of a six-island archipelago near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. The island is administered by Iran as part of the Iranian province of Hormozgan, but is also claimed by the United Arab Emirates .Historical ownership of Abu Musa is...
, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, located at the mouth of the
Persian GulfThe Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes controversially referred to as the Arabian Gulf by most Arab states or simply The...
between Iran and the UAE. The Iranians reasserted their historic claims to the islands, although the Iranians had been dislodged by the British in the late nineteenth century. Iran continued to occupy the islands in 1993, and its action remained a source of contention with the UAE, which claimed authority by virtue of Britain's transfer of the islands to the
emirates||The United Arab Emirates is composed of 7 emirates :-See also:*ISO 3166-2:AE...
of Sharjah and
Ras al-KhaimahRas al-Khaimah is one of the emirates of the United Arab Emirates. It covers an area of 656 square miles . Ras Al Khaimah is in the southern part of the Persian Gulf....
. By late 1992, Sharjah and Iran had reached agreement with regard to Abu Musa, but Ras al-Khaimah had not reached a settlement with Iran concerning Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb.
Bahrain and Qatar
Another point of contention in the gulf was the Bahraini claim to
ZubarahZubarah is a ruined and deserted town located in the northwestern coast of the Qatar peninsula about 105 km from the Qatari capital of Doha, part of Madinat ash Shamal municipality...
on the northwest coast of Qatar and to
HawarHawar is the largest of the Hawar Islands of Bahrain. Its area of 40 square kilometres is nearly 80% of that of the Hawar Island group.In 2002, Bahrain applied to have the Hawar islands recognised as a World Heritage Site, due to their unique environment and habitat for endangered species...
and the
adjacent islandsThe Hawar Islands are a group of islands situated off the west coast of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain of the Persian Gulf....
forty kilometers south of Zubarah, claims that stem from former tribal areas and dynastic struggles. The Al Khalifa had settled at Zubarah before driving the Iranians out of Bahrain in the eighteenth century. The Al Thani ruling family of Qatar vigorously dispute the Al Khalifa claim to the old settlement area now in Qatari hands as well as laying claim to the Bahraini-occupied Hawar and adjacent islands, a stone's throw from the mainland of Qatar but more than twenty kilometers from Bahrain. The simmering quarrel reignited in the spring of 1986 when Qatari helicopters removed and "kidnapped" workmen constructing a Bahraini coast guard station on Dibal Banks (Fasht ad Dibal), a
reefIn nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....
off the coast of Qatar. Through Saudi Arabian mediation, the parties reached a fragile truce, whereby the Bahrainis agreed to remove their installations. However, in 1991 the dispute flared up again after Qatar instituted proceedings to let the
International Court of JusticeThe International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...
(ICJ) in
The HagueThe Hague is the third largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 485,818 and an area of approximately 100 km²...
,
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
, decide whether it had jurisdiction. The two countries exchanged complaints that their respective naval vessels had harassed the other's shipping in disputed waters. The territorial dispute was solved by the ICJ in a 2001 decision. Bahrain kept the Hawar Islands and Qit'at Jaradah but dropped claims to Janan Island and Zubarah, while Qatar retained significant maritime areas and their resources. The agreement has furthered the goal of definitively establishing the border with Saudi Arabia and Saudi-led mediation efforts continue.
Iraq and Kuwait
As one pretext for his invasion of Kuwait in 1990,
Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
revived a long-standing Iraqi claim to the whole of Kuwait based on
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
boundaries. The Ottoman Empire exercised a tenuous sovereignty over Kuwait in the late nineteenth century, but the area passed under British protection in 1899. In 1932, Iraq informally confirmed its border with Kuwait, which had previously been demarcated by the British. In 1961, after Kuwait's independence and the withdrawal of British troops, Iraq reasserted its claim to the emirate based on the Ottomans' having attached it to
Basra ProvinceBasra Vilayet was a vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. The capital was Basra. Its lands included the territory of present-day Kuwait....
. British troops and aircraft were rushed back to Kuwait. A Saudi Arabian-led force of 3,000 from the League of Arab States (Arab League) that supported Kuwait against Iraqi pressure soon replaced them.
The boundary issue again arose when the
Baath PartyThe Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was founded in Damascus in the 1940s by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar, both Syrian intellectuals, as the original secular Arab nationalist movement, to unify all Arab countries in one State and to combat Western colonial rule that dominated the Arab region at that...
came to power in Iraq after a 1963 revolution. The new government officially recognized the independence of Kuwait and the boundaries Iraq had accepted in 1932. Iraq nevertheless reinstated its claims to
BubiyanBubiyan Island is the largest island in the Kuwaiti coastal island chain with an area of 863 km².It is separated from the mainland in the northeast by Khawr Abd Allah and from the mainland in the southwest by Khawr as Sabiyah. The latter channel trends around the northern end of Bubiyan Island,...
and
WarbahWarbah Island is an island belonging to Kuwait, located in the Persian Gulf, near the mouth of the Euphrates River. It is located roughly 100 meters east of the Kuwaiti mainland, 1.5 kilometers north of Bubiyan Island and 1 kilometer south of the Iraqi mainland. It is roughly 15 kilometers long...
islands in 1973, massing troops at the border. During the 1980-88 Iran–Iraq War, Iraq pressed for a long-term lease to the islands in order to improve its access to the gulf and its strategic position. Although Kuwait rebuffed Iraq, relations continued to be strained by boundary issues and inconclusive negotiations over the status of the islands.
In August 1991, Kuwait charged that a force of Iraqis, backed by gunboats, had attacked Bubiyan but had been repulsed and many of the invaders captured. UN investigators found that the Iraqis had come from fishing boats and had probably been scavenging for military supplies abandoned after the
Persian Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , known also as the Gulf War, the First Gulf War,or often as the Second Gulf War and by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as The Mother of all Battles, or commonly as Desert Storm, for the military response...
. Kuwait was suspected of having exaggerated the incident to underscore its need for international support against ongoing Iraqi hostility.
Al Buraimi
A particularly long and acrimonious disagreement involved claims over the Al Buraimi Oasis, disputed since the nineteenth century among tribes from Saudi Arabia,
Abu DhabiAbu Dhabi, officially the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, , is one of seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates . It is the largest emirate by area , and second-largest by population , accounting for approximately 86% of the total land area of the UAE...
, and Oman. Although the tribes residing in the several settlements of the oasis were from Oman and Abu Dhabi, followers of the
Wahhabi religious movementWahhabi or Wahhabism is a sect attributed to Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, an 18th century scholar from what is today known as Saudi Arabia, who advocated to purge Islam of what he considered innovations in Islam...
that originated in what is now Saudi Arabia had periodically occupied and exacted tribute from the area. Oil prospecting began on behalf of Saudi oil interests, and, in 1952, the Saudi Arabians sent a small constabulary force to assert control of the oasis. When arbitration efforts broke down in 1955, the British dispatched the
Trucial Oman ScoutsThe Trucial Oman Scouts was a paramilitary force raised by the British to serve in their Trucial States-History:The Trucial Oman Scouts were established at Sharjah originally as the Trucial Oman Levies in 1951. They were originally to be used as an internal security and rural patrol force...
to expel the Saudi Arabian contingent. After a new round of negotiations, a settlement was reached whereby Saudi Arabia recognized claims of Abu Dhabi and Oman to the oasis. In return, Abu Dhabi agreed to grant Saudi Arabia a land corridor to the gulf and a share of a disputed oil field. Other disagreements over boundaries and water rights remained, however.
Musandam Peninsula
Earlier, the physical separation of the southern portion of Oman from its territory on the Musandam Peninsula was a source of friction between Oman and the various neighboring emirates that became the UAE in 1971. Differences over the disputed territory appeared to have subsided after the onset of the Iran–Iraq War in 1980.
See also
- Iran-Arab relations
Ever since the Islamic conquest of Persia, Iranian–Arab relations have always been very mixed. Arabs and Iranians share bitter: cultural, historical, political, economical rivalries which fuels prominent mutual contempt between both sides. Within the Middle East historical conflicts have always...
- Middle East
The Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
- Foreign relations of Iran
Foreign relations of Iran refers to inter-governmental relationships between Iran and other countries. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the newly-born Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini dramatically reversed the pro-Western foreign policy of the last Shah of Iran,...
- Foreign relations of Iraq
Since 1980, the foreign relations of Iraq were influenced by a number of controversial decisions by the Saddam Hussein administration. Hussein had good relations with the Soviet Union and a number of western countries such as France and Germany, who provided him with advanced weapons systems...
- Foreign relations of Saudi Arabia
Saudi is a non-aligned state whose foreign policy objectives are to maintain its security and its paramount position on the Arabian Peninsula, defend general Arab and Islamic interests, promote solidarity among Islamic governments, and maintain cooperative relations with other oil-producing and...
- Foreign relations of Bahrain
Bahrain plays a modest, moderating role in regional politics and adheres to the views of the Arab League on Middle East peace and Palestinian rights. Since achieving independence in 1971, Bahrain has maintained friendly relations with most of its neighbours and with the world community...
- Foreign relations of Qatar
Qatar achieved full independence on September 3, 1971 in an atmosphere of cooperation with the United Kingdom, the United States of America and friendship with neighboring states. Most Arab states were also among the first countries to recognize Qatar, and the state promptly gained admittance to...
- Foreign relations of the United Arab Emirates
Since the establishment of the United Arab Emirates in 2 December, 1971, UAE adopted a balanced foreign policy based on adoption of dialogue, respect of international conventions, commitment to the United Nations Charter and non-interference of other country's internal affairs, and the settlement...
- Foreign relations of Oman
When Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said assumed power in 1970, Oman had limited contacts with the outside world, including neighbouring Arab states. A total of 14 countries maintained diplomatic presence in the country: Bangladesh, Brunei, the People's Republic of China, France, Germany, India, Italy,...