The boundaries of modem Iran Keith McLachlan UCL Press
For the first time in a single book, “The boundaries of modem Iran” analyses the entire length of Iranian international boundaries. It reviews the establishment, evolution and continuing contentions over Iranian frontier zones and boundary lines, from the creation of the Iranian nation state out of the diverse and dispersed areas of the Persian empire - a process that has given rise to many contemporary problems that spill over into dispute and conflict. The coverage encompasses the volatile war zones of the Gulf, the Shaft Al-Arab boundary, the insecure Kurdish regions of Iran's marches with Iraq, and the diplomatically sensitive balance with Christian Armenia and Muslim Azarbaijan in the northwest. A senior Iranian foreign ministry official reviews the Irano-Central Asian and Transcaucasian boundaries, while Iranian and other specialists look at the problems affecting areas such as the Irano/Afghani and Irano/Pakistani frontiers. As a completely new set of authoritative border studies, The boundaries of modem Iran will help considerably in the development of an under¬standing of the many and complex frontier issues that confront peace and stability at the crossroads of the Gulf, Central Asia, Caucasia and the Iraqi fertile crescent. Students and researchers in international relations, geopolitics, and Middle Eastern and Arab affairs will welcome the book as a key contemporary account of a crucial dimension in their fields of interest.
Keith McLachlan is Director of the Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Contents
Preface / vii Contributors / ix
Introduction Keith McLachlan / 1
Iran's northeastern borders: from Sarakhs to Khazar (the Caspian Sea) Abbas Maleki / 11
Nomads and commissars on the frontiers of eastern Azerbaijan Richard Tapper / 21
The historical development of the boundaries of Azerbaijan M. H. Ganji / 37
The question of Kurdistan and Iran's international borders Maria T. O'Shea / 47
Territoriality and the Iran-Iraq war Keith McLachlan / 57
Interpreting a vague river boundary delimitation: the 1847 Erzerum treaty and the Shaft al-Arab before 1913 Richard Schofield / 72
Ethno-linguistic links between southern Iraq and Khuzistan Bruce Ingham / 93
Iran's maritime boundaries in the Persian Gulf: the case of Abu Musa island Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh / 101
The eastern boundaries of Iran Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh / 128
Index / 141
Contributors
Muhammad Hassan Ganji Professor of Geography, University of Tehran.
Bruce Ingham Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Abbas Maleki Deputy Minister in the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Keith McLachlan Director, Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh Research Associate, Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Maria O'Shea Research Associate, Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Richard Schofield Deputy Director, Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Richard Tapper Reader in Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
PREFACE
This volume reviews the key issues affecting Iranian boundaries and offers an analysis of the evolution of the country's frontiers over the historic period. In all, its constituent chapters make up a detailed summary of the emergence of Iranian boundaries and state territory and the tensions that still affect them. Each of Iran's borders with its principal neighbours is discussed in separate chapters. Abbas Maleki, Deputy Minister in the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, examines the northern frontier zone from an Iranian standpoint in Chapter 2, a study complementary to Professor Ganji's overview of key events affecting the boundary situation in Azerbaijan in Chapter 4. Keith McLachlan deals with the changes in the ownership of territory during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The origins of dispute over the Shaft al-Arab border are reviewed by Richard Schofield in Chapter 8. In addition, three authors offer illuminating explanations of matters directly touching on border problems - Richard Tapper analyzes the implications of Shahseven tribal politics on the international borders of northwest Iran in Chapter 3, Maria O'Shea, a specialist on Kurdish affairs, looks at the interrelationship between notions of a Kurdish entity and the establishment of international boundaries in Chapter 5, while Bruce Ingham debates the linkages between language, ethnicity and local frontiers in southwest Iran in Chapter 7. Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh looks at the development of Iranian borders in the southeast (Ch. 10) and also dissects problems affecting the ownership of the disputed Persian Gulf island of Abu Musa in Chapter 9.
These various studies demonstrate that Iran's borders with its neighbours have been ever-fluctuating in recent centuries and that the hurried frontier delimitations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have left a legacy of problems, not all responsive to immediate solutions. At a time of great uncertainty in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the uneven strides made towards instituting a new international order and Iran's search for identity as a post-revolutionary nation-state, security for the Iranian state is more closely than ever bound up with confidence in firm and settled frontiers. This book suggests, however, that Iran will not easily escape its difficulties and that tensions will persist in respect of profoundly complex boundaries such as those along the Shaft al-Arab and on the continental shelf of the Persian Gulf.
The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors. Maps showing international boundaries are for illustration only and should not be regarded as authoritative.
Historical Development of The Boundaries of Azerbaijan
Acknowledgements are due to a number of people. The Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre is indebted to the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran and the Department of Geography at the University of Tehran for their co-operation in staging the original seminar that inspired this publication, held at SOAS in December 1991. I thank Patricia Toye and Liz Paton for their copyediting and Catherine Lawrence for her cartography. Thanks also go to Roger Jones and Nick Esson of UCL Press for publishing this collection.
If should be noted that transliteration in this book has, wherever possible, been made internally consistent and has been simplified. However, authors have been given discretion to employ the system of transliteration of their choice where they have felt strongly about the English language spelling of particular place names and real names.
Chapter One Introduction
Keith Mclachlan
Traditional regions and national frontiers
Iran has functioned for at least 5,000 years as a state and the centre of an empire. During this considerable period its boundaries with its neighbours have been relatively fluid (Fig. 1.1).1 Nonetheless, despite the powerful influences working against the need for hard and fast borders, of which Islam is perhaps the principal one, contemporary Iran under both the Pahlavi regime and the Islamic republic has adopted very clear policies towards defining and protecting state territory.
The administration of Iran has historically been plagued with difficulties of exerting authority outside the main areas of population and, therefore, in fixing its national frontiers. Iran is a vast and diverse country of 1,648,000km2, only a tenth of which is under settled forms of economic use. The rest is desert, steppe and high mountain. In many ways Iran was until the early 20th century a set of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups unified under a single government and sharing a common literature, social ethos and culture. The largest single provincial region by population size was Azerbaijan, where there was a concentration of Azhari speakers of the Turk-ic group of languages. Other coherent areas with a regional consciousness could be defined, including Kurdistan in the west, the Arab zone of the Khuzistan lowlands in the southwest, the Turkmen steppe of the north and the Baluch area of the southeast.
The Iranian territorial inheritance from the Qajar dynasty in 1921 was much reduced from earlier periods and weakly defined in international practice. This volume attempts to examine the evolution of the country's international boundaries in the contemporary epoch during which Iran has been buffeted by an apparently unending series of international and internal crises.
The territorial consolidation under Riza Shah
Riza Khan's and Sayyid Zia al-Din Tabatabai's coup d'etat against the Qajars in February 1921 gave Iran a short breathing space of strong central control during which the idea of a modern nation-state was imposed on the country and the national borders made generally secure. This experience was important for Iran because it enabled the government to tie its many varied provinces firmly to the centre. Beginning in 1921, Riza Khan put down regional revolts by the tribes of the Khamseh and others before beginning the process of reducing rebellion elsewhere in the west.2 Riza Khan took advantage of the Russian withdrawal from Iranian soil in September 1921 to put down the revolt of Kuchik Khan in the northern province of Gilan, marking the clear beginning of the centralization process. In the following year Riza Khan attacked rebel forces in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan and settled the northeast province of Khorasan. The process continued in 1923 in the south where the main tribes, the Bakhtiari and Qashqai, were put down and Shaikh Khazal, the regional ruler of Khuzistan, removed to Tehran.
The military consolidation of the power of the centre was developed in parallel with Riza Khan's seizure and legitimization of his own position. In 1925 Riza Shah began the political process of sealing the unity of the nation3 by deposing the last of the Qajar dynasty, Muhammad Ali Shah, and setting in its place the House of Pahlavi.
Riza Shah's carefully constructed state and its national frontiers were, however, far from strong. The illusion of dominance from the centre worked only in relation to the internal provinces of the country. Iran's abilities to confront the outside world were very limited despite the building of the Iranian army. The Iranian authorities also successfully engaged in legal battles with the British in the form of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in the south and made some gains in the 1933 oil agreement.4 In 1941, what appeared to be a pro-German revolt by Rashid Ali in Iraq brought the Middle East region directly into the lines of conflict of the Second World War. Iran was declared neutral in this war but the Rashid Ali affair in Iraq and growing British suspicions concerning the activities of German agents in Iran put Iran's neutrality in jeopardy. The invasion of the USSR by German forces in June 1941 added to Iran's difficulties, since the Anglo-Soviet alliance exposed the country to simultaneous pressures from the north and the south. Iran increasingly became perceived by the allies as a strategic supply corridor for transferring war materiel to aid Russian defence.5 Iran's oil was seen as a key commodity for the use of the allies, also to be denied the axis powers.6 Iran was occupied by the British and Russians on 25 August 1941.
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Keith McLachlan
The boundaries of modem Iran
UCL Press
UCL Press The Soas/GRC Geopolitics Series 2 The boundaries of modem Iran Edited by Keith McLachlan
The SOAS/GRC Geopolitics Series
Territorial foundations of the Gulf states Edited by Richard Schofield
The boundaries of modem Iran Edited by Keith McLachlan
The Hom of Africa Edited by Charles Gurdon
The changing face of the Balkans Edited by Frank Carter & Harold Norris
Transcaucasian boundaries Edited by John Wright, Richard Schofield, Suzanne Goldenberg
Keith McLachlan Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre School of Oriental and African Studies University of London
