From the Gulf Cooperation Council to the European Union
The recent statement by the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council should be seen as a weakness for the European External Action Service, which is more of a political haste based on a misunderstanding of the situation that the European Union wants to use for a cost-free escape forward.
By forming the Union, European countries aimed to significantly increase their ability to act and play a role by creating a larger and stronger multilateralism and to disrupt the balance of traditional bipolar systems and remove Europe from the buffer zone of powers.
However, this Union could not show an independent and decisive nature in dealing with the most important regional and global issues.
From the perspective of peace and security, which alongside freedom of movement and democracy are the main foundations of the Union, the Balkan crisis, which turned one of the darkest pages of crimes against humanity in Europe, was a major defeat for the passive Union and showed that the conservative and uncreative European Union has a long way to go to gain not global, but regional leadership qualifications.
The European Union’s entry into the nuclear issue of the Islamic Republic of Iran was another European ambition for significant role-playing, which over nearly 20 years showed that Europe did not consider itself more than a messenger between Iran and the US.
When Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, Europeans could not preserve the agreement. Europe, in a symbolic move, established a financial channel called INSTEX to maintain the JCPOA despite Trump’s withdrawal. This grand mechanism, under the fear of the US reaction, could not even introduce a single European bank for trade with Iran and thus was dissolved without any commercial exchange.
The UAE and the effort for international documentation in the matter of the UAE’s claim over the three Iranian islands is not a unique and singular issue, as there are many territorial disputes between countries worldwide.
The newly established and recent government of the United Arab Emirates, in a new policy, is taking international documentation steps for its long-term goals. The UAE, aware of its significant weakness due to the lack of historical government record, is trying to set its departure point in the historical narrative of the three Iranian islands from 1971 onwards and document such actions for its future legal actions.
The UAE’s effort to internationalize the issue and gain legitimacy in its favor began with the inclusion of the three islands’ topic in the meetings of the Gulf Cooperation Council and now places this issue in bilateral agreements with other countries using the tool of economic attractions.
The UAE’s covert actions have started with the inclusion of seemingly neutral paragraphs in agreements with China and Russia, which are actually severely against the clear national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran because, firstly, the inclusion of this issue implies a tacit acknowledgment of its existence by Russia and China, and secondly, it’s an indirect violation of Iran’s territorial integrity.
The joint statement of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union indicates the continuation of the UAE’s covert movement based on a misunderstanding of the Middle East crisis and the opportunism of this country regarding the situation facing Iran. The labeling of Iran as the occupier of the islands and the endorsement by the not-so-decisive European Union also indicates this same misunderstanding of Iran in Europe.
Firstly, Europe must be accountable for its illegal labeling and intervention because, according to international laws, occupation refers to a situation where, during an international armed conflict, a territory or parts of it are under the temporary effective control of a foreign power.
While for the reasons detailed below, it has always belonged to Iran and at times in history has been occupied by foreign powers.
1. From ancient times and the era of great empires, the Persian Gulf and its islands have been part of the great empire of Iran.
2. After the Treaty of Westphalia and the establishment of the nation-state in Iran, the Safavid government emerged as the first Iranian nation-state, and while the southern deserts of the Persian Gulf were the habitation of tribes and clans, the national government of Iran had territorial sovereignty over the entire Persian Gulf and its islands. 3. The Iranian government at times leased commercial exploitation of the Persian Gulf islands to local sheikhs through agreements, such as the lease of Lengeh and Hormuz by the sheikhs of Muscat or the Qawasim sheikhs whose settlements were on both sides of the Persian Gulf. 4. While the UAE wants to portray the islands’ dispute as an issue from 1971 onwards, there are very strong international documents that prove Iran’s sovereignty over these islands.
The British Consulate in Bushehr, in its repeated reports from 1878 to 1887, stated that the Qasemi of southern Iran were vassals of the Shah of Iran and in this role governed the islands of Abu Musa, Tunb, and Siri. The documents of this consulate also confirm that the taxes collected from the islands were handed over as tribute to the General Governorship of Iran in the province of Fars.
5. British maps, including a map given by the British Foreign Minister to the Shah of Iran in 1888, show all the islands of the Strait of Hormuz, Siri, Qeshm, Abu Musa, and the Tunbs in the color of Iran. 6. The Viceroy of India’s map of Iran in 1983 and the Survey of India’s map in 1897 also show the islands of Abu Musa, Lesser Tunb, and Greater Tunb in the color of Iran. 7. In 1903, the British government, which held naval power in the Persian Gulf, forcibly lowered the Iranian flag from the three islands. This British action was due to London’s fear of the Persian Gulf being seized by Russia and Germany and their greed for India. The Qasemi tribes, whose agency Iran had severed on the islands, refused to obey the government and, using the pretext that the islands were their habitat, raised their flag on the islands under British support, marking the actual start of the occupation of Iranian islands by foreigners.
8. The Iranian governments during the Qajar and Pahlavi periods always protested the occupation of the three islands by Britain until their recapture, and Iran never forgot or remained silent about its ownership of these islands. The documents of Iran’s protests are kept in the National Archives of England. 9. Iranian history has always been a scene of colonial competition between the two powers of Russia and England. Large parts of Iran have been partitioned and separated from the country through various colonial treaties, but Iran has always used every opportunity it had to restore its territorial integrity. An example is the establishment of the self-proclaimed republics of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan under Soviet protection, which the central government regained sovereignty over these provinces after the withdrawal of occupying forces. 10. The restoration of Iran’s sovereignty over the three islands was carried out in accordance with international law, and Iran exercised its territorial jurisdiction one day before the British forces left the islands, and the occupying British forces peacefully and by mutual agreement returned the islands to the Iranian government as the rightful owner, and the Iranian flag was raised in their presence. Therefore, the use of the term occupation by the UAE is unfounded and baseless. The point is why the European Union now brazenly signs a statement that baselessly and without foundation accuses a third country of occupation and incurs significant legal responsibility.
In the 50th year of a baseless claim today, the Union hastily takes the side of a state with the least legal and historical documentation for its claim and uses harsh words against Iran that it has been reluctant to use for Israel for seventy years. What the European Union endorses in the final statement at the cost of economic attractions is the result of incorrect speculation and inference about the near future of the Middle East crisis. It is clear that Europeans are taking their eggs out of Iran’s basket because in their analyses they have reached the point of no return in the military confrontation between Iran, the United States, and Israel and have presumably imagined Iran as the loser of the great future conflict. Under this belief, they have convinced themselves of a matter for which they have no precedent or legal and international justification for unilateral involvement and expression of opinion.
The European Union perceives its support for the UAE as cost-free and has sold what it imagines to be free phrases at a high price to the Gulf sheikhs. This policy has also worked with Russia and China, and the UAE is eagerly continuing this trend to address Iran with harsher terms, which ties a rope for Iran’s distant future. It is not far-fetched that with this method, the UAE buys implicit endorsements of its sovereignty over the three islands, and oil dollars buy more fragile words against Iran and engineer them into bilateral and multilateral agreement documents. Of course, the UAE cannot buy allies with money because those who come with monetary inducement also flee with the threat of fear. Europe has shown that it is by no means a strategic ally and has always been a follower of its greater power. The recent actions of the UAE are opportunistic moves that have intensified with the increase in tensions in Iran-West relations.
The fantasy that the UAE is pursuing today is the same act that Iran’s rented sheikhs performed when British colonialism entered the Persian Gulf, refusing to obey the central government and, knowing the military weakness of Iran’s government and resorting to British naval power, seized Iranian islands in their name. Today, the UAE government has mistakenly concluded in its assessments that Iran will be the loser of a war that is imminent with the US and Israel.
Iran should not allow the UAE to fish in troubled waters. Today’s statements by China, Russia, the US, and the European Union could become reference documents in the distant future and serve as the basis for the global community’s judgment. These statements could provide the UAE with legal documents for a 50-year period.
On Iran’s side, there has practically been no international legal production, and there is a void that could be detrimental to the country. Our Foreign Minister has defined the fourteenth government’s policy against the US as dispute management. Perhaps dispute management can be more understandably defined in practice as the necessity of converting confrontation with the US into opposition to the US. By maintaining its principles, Iran can change its strategy from confrontation, which involves full-scale engagement with the prominence of the physical element, to opposition, emphasizing the element of diplomacy. This dispute management is what can correct the miscalculations from the UAE to Europe.
