Page 281 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

278 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

It was this question of maritime access, and the related issues of maritime
jurisdiction and sovereignty, which was to be largely responsible for the
reopening of the Iraq-Kuwait frontier question in the latter months of 1972.
Before turning to this phase in the dispute, therefore, it is necessary to look at
the origins and growth of the Perso-Iraqi contest over the Shatt al-Arab; for it
is along this waterway, and in the waters around the coasts and islands in its
vicinity, that the interests of the three littoral states, Iraq, Persia and Kuwait,
overlap and conflict.
The second and third articles of the treaty of Erzerum of 31 May 1847, which
defined the frontier between the Ottoman and Persian empires, invested the
Sublime Porte with sovereignty over the whole of the Shatt al-Arab, while
recognizing Persian sovereignty over the left or eastern bank of the river and
over the town and anchorage of Muhammarah (now Khurramshahr), at the
junction of the Karun river and the Shatt al-Arab. The actual delimitation of
the frontier was deferred again and again, and it was not until 1911, when a
protocol was signed at Tehran by the four powers concerned (Britain, Russia,
Turkey and Persia), that a delimitation commission was established. A further

protocol was signed at Constantinople two years later, and the delimitation
commission began its work in 1914. In the region of the Shatt al-Arab it
demarcated the frontier (from the point where, coming from the north, it
struck the river about twenty kilometres downstream from Basra) as running
along the low-water mark on the Persian side, except in the vicinity of
Muhammarah, where it was made to follow the thalweg, or line of deepest
flow.
When Iraq achieved independence she made it clear that she considered
herself entitled, as a successor state of the Ottoman empire, to succeed to full
sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab and to the frontier demarcated in 1914;and
she believed her rights to have been reinforced by the transfer to her of
responsibility for the security of navigation in the Shatt al-Arab, through the
medium of the Basra Port Authority which had been set up by the British
during the First World War. Persia, on the other hand, after the accession of
Reza Shah and the reduction of Muhammarah and the adjoining province of
Khuzistan to his authority in 1924-5, found the frontier regime prevailing in
the Shatt al-Arab increasingly irksome, especially as it affected Abadan Island,
the port of shipment for Persian oil, where ships had to berth and load in Iraqi
waters. After some sharp exchanges between the Persian and Iraqi
governments the dispute was referred to the League of Nations at the close 0
1934. Iraq took her stand on the treaty of Erzerum and the Constantinop e
protocol of 1913. Persia declared both instruments to be null and void because

they had been concluded under pressure from Britain and Russia. They ha no
force, the Persians contended, either in law or in equity in determining e
frontier. On the contrary, they claimed, the frontier should be dehrnite
according to the recognized principle of international law obtaining in