Page 92 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 89

Abu Musa is only a few miles square, with one tiny port and no land flat

enough to serve as a site for an airfield. It has never had more than a few dozen
semi-permanent inhabitants, except on the occasions when gangs of Arab
labourers have been brought over to mine the island’s deposits of iron oxide.
Otherwise it has been frequented mainly by fishermen from the Arabian shore.
The Greater Tunb (Tunb-e-Buzurq) is little more than a desolate rock, visited
occasionally by fishermen. The Lesser Tunb (Nabiyu Tunb) to the west is even

smaller, having no significance except as a hazard to shipping. If the shah had
wanted to control the main shipping channel, then he already had Sirri, which
was equally suitable - or unsuitable - as an outpost. More to the point, the
Persian islands of Qishm, Hanjam and Larak were much better placed strateg­
ically to command the Straits of Hormuz. There was obviously some motive
behind the shah’s demand other than the one he had declared, and one didn’t

have to look far to discover it. Oil prospecting had begun in the waters around
Abu Musa, and there were promising indications of the existence of a sub­
marine oilfield. Oil also was behind the shah’s claim to the Tunbs. On every
occasion that attempts had been made to define a median line down the Gulf for
the purpose of oil exploration, the question had invariably .arisen whether
islands were to be taken into account in fixing the baseline from which the

median line was to be calculated. In the case of the median line between Saudi
Arabia and Persia, for instance, the Persians had wanted Kharq Island, off
Bushire, to be designated the baseline on the Persian side for dividing the
waters of the upper Gulf. If the Tunbs were to be acquired by Persia, they
could serve eventually to increase her share of the continental shelf in the lower
Gulf.

In October 1970 the Persian government formally informed the British
government that it would not recognize the existence of the UAE unless its
demands over Abu Musa and the Tunbs were satisfied. The warning was
repeated publicly in late December by the Persian foreign minister, Zahedi:

‘Iran will never abandon her legal rights to sovereignty over the islands of Abu
Musa and the Tunbs and unless these rights are completely recognized there
can be no peace and security in the Persian Gulf.’ Here, then, was a situation
comparable to that created by Saudi Arabia’s claim to Abu Dhabi territory,
with the same implications for Britain’s legal position in the Gulf and her treaty
responsibilities to the Trucial Shaikhdoms. In fact, the implications could be
said to be more significant in this instance, since the British position had rested

ab initio upon the sea (i.e. upon the trucial system and the maritime police of
the Gulf) and the Persian demands posed an overt threat to the maritime peace.
urthermore the implicit obligation upon the British government to defend
the Trucial Shaikhdoms from aggression was even more marked in the case of
attack from the sea than it was in the case of assault by land. The existence of
the obligation had been recognized virtually from the very inception of the

trucial system in 1835, and by the time of the conclusion of the treaty of