Iran Continues to Test Gulf Waters

By Michael Collins Dunn

Iran's Majlis (Parliament) recently roiled Gulf waters by formally defining Iran's territorial waters at 12 nautical miles from its coasts. Although a 12-mile limit is common internationally, the narrow Gulf waters have long been an arena for disputes over transit rights and offshore oil exploration rights. A map of the Gulf is a montage of overlapping claims, both between Iran and its Arab neighbors and among the various Arab states.

What has sparked concern in Gulf Arab capitals and in the West is the suspicion that in the wake of Iran's unilateral seizure of Abu Musa island last year, formal assertion of the 12-mile claim may be another Iranian effort to determine just how far it can go in expanding its hold on Gulf waters. The U.S. is concerned because of the record of Iranian interference with neutral shipping during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran's continuing arms buildup, and its public deployment in this year's "Victory 4" naval maneuvers of its new Russian built submarine.

Pushing An Unlocked Door

Iran is not, however, likely to make the mistake Iraq's Saddam Hussain made when he provoked foreign intervention by invading Kuwait in 1990. Rather, Iran appears only to be pushing wherever it believes there is an unlocked door. The 12-mile nautical claim allows it to further complicate already overlapping claims and counterclaims, which also involve international waters like the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, the 12-mile claim may only be the other shoe dropping from last year's assertion of full Iranian sovereignty over Abu Musa, since a 12-mile limit around that island would push Iranian waters much closer to the UAE shore. Last year's move on Abu Musa itself was a masterful demonstration of knowing just how to achieve Iranian goals without provoking open conflict.

In 1971, Iran (then led by the shah) occupied the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands, which had been owned by the emirate of Ras Al-Khaima, and agreed with Sharja to share occupation of the island of Abu Musa. To his American mentors, the shah argued that Iran's occupation would guarantee that these islands, controlling the Strait of Hormuz, would not fall into hands hostile to the West. then came the Iranian Revolution.

In the case of Abu Musa, the 1971 agreement with Sharja (one of the seven United Arab Emirates) provided that both Iran and Sharja would maintain forces on Abu Musa and share administrative control, with neither giving up its claim to the whole island. A three-mile limit was provided for at the time. Last April, Iran began turning back at the dock permanent residents and foreigners alike unless they obtained an Iranian visa. By also refusing Iranian visas to some of them, Iran in effect asserted full sovereignty. The resultant crisis between Iran and the UAE has cooled, but has not been forgotten.

Since Iran has had military forces on the island for over 20 years, what it did on Abu Musa last year was not exactly over-the-border aggression, but it certainly changed the status quo. Now, with the Iranian assertion of a 12-nautical-mile limit around its territories, Iran seeks to shift the status quo again.

Naturally, the Gulf states have complained, and the U.S. has reasserted the principle of free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. But, since Iran has not sought to close the strait, no one seems likely at present to fight over Iranian violation of the 1971 agreement.

Iran's defenders argue that Iran is merely asserting its own historical claims, and that after its debilitating eight-year war with Iraq, Iran's arms buildup is basically reconstruction, and its heavy defense expenditures not that far out of line with those of the late shah.

If all of this is granted, then none of Iran's actions by themselves are dangerous. Even its virtual scrapping of the agreement with Sharja is consistent with Iran's standing unilateral claim of Ml sovereignty over the island. Nor is Iran about to seek advice or approval from the U.S. or the West before it takes actions it considers in its own national interest.

But a pattern is emerging which suggests that Iran is not seeking merely to maintain the status quo in the Gulf, but to shift the balance in its own favor. As the country with the longest Gulf coastline, the Islamic Republic, following the pattern set by the shah, seems to be signaling its neighbors that it plans to make its will felt throughout the Gulf, whether they like it or not.

It arouses legitimate concern not just because the Gulf is a delicately balanced political as well as economic mosaic which happens to encompass about two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves. Disputed claims on tiny islands and submerged reefs and extended territorial waters contain the seeds of future conflicts. The Iraq-Kuwait dispute exploded into a war which engaged nearly a million non-Iranian troops in the Gulf. Apparently the Iranians are calculating exactly how far they can push their neighbors without bringing any of those troops back again.

Michael Collins Dunn, Ph.D., is senior analyst of the International Estimate, Inc., a Washington-based consultancy, and editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.