Iran and the Caspian

In the name of God
Iran and the Caspian
Background
The Caspian Sea, also called the Sea of Mazandaran or the Khazar, is the largest lake in the world, with an area of 376,000 square kilometres. For centuries most of this lake lay within Iranian territory, but with the gradual expansion of Tsarist Russia, more and more of its shores came under Russian control. Then, in the course of the Russo-Iranian wars, the treaties of Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828) not only separated large parts of Iranian territory, placing large sections of the lake's shoreline within Russia, but also, under Article 5 of the Golestan treaty and Article 8 of the Turkmenchay treaty, stripped Iran of the right to navigate this sea. After the fall of the Tsarist state, the Soviet communist government, on 26 February 1921 (7 Esfand 1299), renounced these articles in Iran's favour, and Article 11 of that treaty permitted navigation under the flag of either country. Later, on 25 March 1940 (5 Farvardin 1319), another treaty was signed between the Imperial State of Iran and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Article 13 of which not only affirmed the right of navigation for both parties but also stipulated that no other country could navigate this lake. The lake was also referred to as the Iranian and Soviet Sea. In this treaty and in the numerous fishing and trade agreements that followed, the two parties stipulated that, apart from ten miles (16 kilometres) from the coast designated as an exclusive fishing zone, the rest of the sea was held in common by the two countries, and 50-50 sovereignty over the lake was officially recognised. Thousands of official maps printed by both countries also show this 50-50 sovereignty, and no objection was ever raised by either side.

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran in February 1979 (Bahman 1357), the government of the Islamic Republic assumed all the obligations of the Imperial State of Iran, and no break occurred in the continuity of the 1940 treaty and the subsequent agreements. In 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed and was divided into several countries. From then on, Iran became a neighbour on this lake to four countries: Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation. That same year, 1991, in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, the presidents of these four countries stated in a joint declaration that they would observe and respect all the treaties of the former Soviet state. But some time later Azerbaijan, and then Kazakhstan, after inviting Western companies, especially American firms, began finding fault with the 1940 treaty and demanding that the sea be divided. Throughout those years, up to 1996 and 1997, Iran consistently affirmed the 1940 treaty and the common status of the sea in numerous letters to the UN Secretary-General. But from then on, after Mr. Khamenei handed the Foreign Ministry the "Look East" policy and Iran drew closer to the Russians, Iran's voice of protest grew faint and was finally silenced, and Iran accepted that a new legal regime be drafted for the Caspian. So far, 23 expert-level meetings of representatives of these five countries, four meetings of foreign ministers, and two summits of heads of state have been held. The first summit must be regarded as the starting point of the trampling of Iran's rights. This meeting was held on 22 and 23 April 2002 (3 and 4 Ordibehesht 1381) in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. In the draft declaration of this summit, Article 7 raised the need to draw up a new legal regime, and Article 12 raised the idea of a commonly held sea surface but a divided seabed. At the summit, the position of Mr. Khatami, the president of Iran, was to form four expert commissions and to play for time, so as to evade the division of the sea. But the president of Russia, Mr. Putin, sharply cut Mr. Khatami off and declared that such talk was a waste of time and that Russia would solve the problem by concluding bilateral agreements with the other countries. These remarks met with no protest from Iran; the only result was that Mr. Khatami, from sheer nervous strain, developed back pain and was confined to bed in his residence for 24 hours. Mr. Putin, meanwhile, within 24 hours of leaving the meeting, announced in an interview in the port of Astrakhan that the Russian armed forces would hold a military exercise in the Caspian Sea on 10 Mordad of that same year (1 August 2002), in effect backing his words with the Russian army. The next summit was scheduled for the following year (2003, or 1382 in the Iranian calendar), but in practice it was held four years late, on 16 October 2007 (24 Mehr 1386), in Tehran. It has now become clear that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan had reached their agreements in Moscow on 10 Azar of the year before that summit, that is, 1380 (1 December 2001); in effect, they had settled their arrangements together with Russia and then attended the Ashgabat summit, presenting Iran with a fait accompli. Indeed, 20 days after the Ashgabat summit, on 23 Ordibehesht 1381 (13 May 2002), Russia signed a bilateral protocol with Kazakhstan which, by connecting the end points of the two countries' coastlines, in effect gave about 27 percent of the sea to Kazakhstan and about 19 percent to Russia. Then, on 1 Mehr of that same year, 1381 (23 September 2002), another agreement between Russia and Azerbaijan allotted a share of about 18 percent to Azerbaijan using the same formula, so that these three countries in effect divided 64 percent of the seabed among themselves. On the surface of the water, however, where establishing borders would actually benefit Iran, the Russian formula is a commonly held surface. This means that the warships of Russia and Kazakhstan, the two nuclear powers on this sea, can come right up to Iran's shores and threaten the ports of Anzali, Nowshahr and Torkaman and all our coastal cities, while Iran, which has only a few small fishing boats on this sea, has no means of responding in kind. Up to this point, Russia has done whatever it pleased and has imposed on us the formula that is the worst possible outcome for Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran, for its part, has naively consoled itself with the fact that it has not signed any document, and has occasionally repeated that no foreign power must come to the Caspian Sea, whereas during this period it needed exactly the opposite: the European and American powers, to force the Russians into flexibility.
The Second Summit in Tehran
This meeting was held in Tehran on Tuesday, 16 October 2007 (24 Mehr 1386), attended by Messrs. Aliyev, Putin, Nazarbayev, Berdimuhamedow and Ahmadinejad, from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran respectively. Before the meeting, Russia had, through a skilful manoeuvre, persuaded Iran that it would support Iran in the nuclear crisis and would also resolve the issue of the Bushehr power plant. Russian sources had also floated the story of a plot to assassinate Mr. Putin in Tehran, keeping his trip shrouded in uncertainty until the last moment and, in effect, making Iran pay dearly for it. And indeed, on the day of the summit, Mr. Putin arrived in Tehran an hour late.
At the summit, Mr. Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, stated explicitly that with the fall of the Soviet Union, that regime's treaties, including the 1940 treaty, had become history. Not a sound came from the president of Iran or his delegation. Mr. Aliyev of Azerbaijan likewise stated that his country attached great importance to the bilateral agreements on this sea and respected them. Again the Iranian delegation remained silent and raised no objection. Mr. Putin drove the last nail into this coffin by saying that the countries of the southern Caspian (that is, Iran and Turkmenistan) would do well to learn from the countries of the north (that is, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan) and solve the problem between themselves. In other words, 64 percent of the seabed has been divided, and these two countries should divide the remaining 36 percent between themselves by some formula, so that even if it were split equally, Iran's share would be 18 percent, and an 18 percent at that which contains no significant oil and gas reserves. Moreover, if the northerners' formula were applied and the two end points of Iran's coastline, the port of Astara and the port of Hasanqoli, were connected, Iran's share would be less than 11 percent and Turkmenistan's 25 percent (the method Turkmenistan favours, quite apart from its dispute with Azerbaijan over the central area of the sea). Even a wall would have cried out, yet not a sound came from the Iranian delegation. More remarkable still, the only things the president of Iran raised in his speech were kindness and compassion, that Iran is your second homeland, and that we must take care that outsiders (especially the Americans) do not come. Meanwhile these countries would not even allow a single sentence against America to be included in the final declaration, even as a sop to Iran, something Iran had requested. They did write in a few courtesies towards Iran, which go no further than the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT and merely state the obvious. As for Mr. Putin, once he had gotten what he wanted and was assured that the oblivious Iranian delegation had said nothing and struck no discordant note, he responded to Iranian reporters who asked him to promise that the Bushehr power plant would be up and running before he left the Kremlin the following year by saying that when he was a child he only made promises to his mommy, in effect laughing in Iran's face. As for supporting Iran in a dead-end affair such as the nuclear issue and uranium enrichment, he in effect made it conditional on a proposal he put to Iran's Leader.
Thus, through the ill-informed conduct of the Iranian delegation at the Tehran summit, and through a silence that in legal custom amounts to tacit acceptance of the claims of the other heads of state, the trampling of Iran's rights in the Caspian Sea is on its way to becoming legally institutionalised. And within the few years before the next summit is held (for experience has shown that, given the obstructionism of the leaders of these republics, talk of a summit the following year is a joke), the sea will in effect be divided and its resources exploited.
Half of the Caspian, that is, Iran's share, covers 188,000 square kilometres. Even if Turkmenistan were generous enough to let the 20 percent of the sea that Iran is demanding be allotted to our country, an area of more than 110,000 square kilometres, equivalent to the provinces of Isfahan or Fars and larger than Khuzestan and the country's other provinces, would in effect be severed from Iran. Furthermore, initial estimates put the oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea at 200 billion barrels, and even the most pessimistic American estimates put them at 178 billion barrels. At a price of 80 dollars a barrel (which has at times exceeded 140 dollars), Iran's 50 percent share of these reserves comes to about 7 trillion dollars, the equivalent of more than a hundred years of Iran's current oil revenue. This is quite apart from the gas reserves, which are still in the final stages of exploration. There is no doubt that, up to this point, the diplomacy of the Islamic Republic has dealt a blow to our national interests that, in Iran's modern history, is comparable only to the treaties of Turkmenchay and Golestan.
What Is to Be Done?
The writer of these lines knows that the three-part proposal set out below will not be implemented by Iran's current regime. These gentlemen are, quite simply, far too preoccupied with their childish rivalry with America over regional hegemony, with suppressing the defenceless people of Iran, with the rights of the Palestinian people, with sorcery and incantations and prayers and the like, to worry about the country's territorial integrity and national interests. Yet I consider it my duty, at least for the historical record, to present this three-part proposal for achieving the best outcome, one that safeguards our national interests.
The best outcome for us is for the common status of the sea under the 1940 treaty to be preserved on both the surface and the seabed. On the surface, the exclusive fishing zone, that is, 10 miles, would be retained; on the seabed, the exclusive right to extract oil and gas resources would belong to a company whose shareholders would be the five littoral states, with Iran holding 50 percent of the shares.
The Three-Part Proposal
Part One – Legal measures – Since, under Article 78 of the country's current constitution, any change to the border lines requires the approval of at least four-fifths of the members of parliament, the Islamic Consultative Assembly (the Majlis) should formally object to the statements of the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and to the weakness of the government, and declare those statements null and void. An official letter from the Majlis, its criticism of the government, and an obligation it places on the government would in effect open the way for the Foreign Ministry, on that basis, to lodge a complaint with the United Nations and international bodies (similar to what Qavam al-Saltaneh did in the affair of the northern oil, and the role the Majlis played in those days). The Sea of Mazandaran is valuable enough that, if necessary, the Majlis could penalise and even bring down the government over it. At this stage it is essential that Iran, in order to put its claim on the legal record, insist again and again on its 50-50 right in the Caspian Sea and rely on the treaties previously signed with the Soviet Union. At the same time, using international law firms, it should warn the oil companies active in the Caspian that if they invest without obtaining Iran's consent, they will face lawsuits from Iran worth billions of dollars. I myself have consulted several major law firms, and they guarantee Iran's success in pursuing these claims. In this way, operations on the seabed would be held at their present stage, since every new investment makes matters more complicated.
Part Two – Economic measures – At the same time, through an active economic effort and intensive negotiations, Iran should seek to form a consortium of major European and American oil companies to invest in the oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea. That is, on the one hand, by objecting to these companies' current contracts with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Iran would show that it will not permit unilateral exploitation, and on the other hand it would put forward that the only solution is a single, unified contract between a company owned by the littoral states and a unified consortium. In this way Iran would in effect open the way for its own diplomatic manoeuvring and show that the only possible formula is a commonly held entity in the Caspian Sea.
Part Three – Political measures – At the same time, through a diplomatic effort, Iran must be able to bring the European powers and America into supporting their oil companies, and in effect use their power to push Russia back in the Caspian. As it happens, among these countries Britain and America can play the greatest role, that is, the very two countries with which Iran has the most problems. Right now, thanks to the shrewd diplomacy of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Britain and America are playing exactly this role to the benefit of those two countries. Next in line come France and Germany, and then Italy and the other members of the G8 group of industrialised countries. The key, of course, lies in the hands of the Americans, and after them the British.
It must be said plainly that, with the instruments it has at its disposal in the region, Iran can perform far better than the two weak countries of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and achieve the formula that best serves our interests in the Sea of Mazandaran, provided that the rulers in Tehran think about the national interest instead of hollow slogans.