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 Tumb islands to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. This was not particularly newsworthy because the GCC has 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 proven far 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 potential military value overlays and enhances other incentives, such as the question of offshore oil in the islands' territorial limits 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 Estimate uses 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 international interest, but with the 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 with almost 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, Jasimi in the local dialect) 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 20th Century saw a series of claims, counterclaims, and assertions of control typical of 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's sovereignty 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, colonial boundaries were treated as sacrosanct for the post-colonial states, 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 local rulers 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 both heavily tribal in their organization (especially the parts of Iran near the southern coast), and local coasting economies were dependent on pearl-diving, fishing and a limited amount of other trade, including the gold trade with India. 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 MoveIn 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 Royal Navy 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 regional powers 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 Tumbs were 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 with some effect in Western chanceries at the time, that the fragmented, tribal emirates 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 Dhabi and Dubai, the overwhelming wealth which 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 Special Representative 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-Khaima refused to deal; his cousin Sheikh Khalid of Sharja began 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 Sharja agreed 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 Musa under the agreement with Sharja. But they also landed on Greater and Lesser Tumb.

The Ruler of Ras al-Khaima had 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

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