Iran warns UAE over disputed islands near Strait of Hormuz
The Islamic Republic of Iran is once again generating political confrontation and friction in the Middle East. This time, the United Arab Emirates is the main target of its warnings. The Iranian state has issued a threat to the Emirate, to which it claims three Gulf islands (Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb) as its own.
The Emirates is the diplomatic objective of the ayatollahs' regime at the moment; just when the UAE has just sealed the historic Abraham Accords with Israel whereby the Gulf country established full diplomatic ties with the Jewish nation, to which Bahrain also adhered. This understanding has thus marked a new path towards settling the regional conflict that has pitted the Hebrew state against its Arab neighbours for many years and has the conflict with the Palestinians as its main problem to be solved.
The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, stated on Monday that the three islands in the Gulf (Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb) are an integral part of his country’s territory.
In addition to the territorial claim, this area comprised of the islets raises a highly significant economic and energy issue. The Emirates are planning to build an oil pipeline together with Israel in the Gulf, precisely with this enclave as an important point; this is a major setback for Iran, a major political rival in the area of both the Emirates and Israel. This project stems from the last understanding reached between the Emirates and Israel, which came under the important mediation of Donald Trump's US government.
Khatibzadeh expressed his disagreement with this joint strategy, in the words of the Iranian news agency Fars: “Regardless of the amount of error that one of the neighboring countries commits, we are trying to return it to the right track of regional procedures according to the policy of good neighbors. T UAE has gone in the wrong direction in some areas for years.” “Iran does not allow anyone to do anything on its borders and territories with regard to the three islands, and the three islands in the Persian Gulf have certainly been part of Iran, and these allegations do not create any rights for anyone and do not affect the exercise of Iranian sovereignty,” added Khatibzadeh, who also stated “the Zionist entity is in the gutter and is trying to drown everyone with it, and we hope that the UAE and the current government will not sink with the Zionist entity.”
The battle for the islands continues today. The British government granted Iran in 1968 the Greater Tunb Islands, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, before their withdrawal from the Arab Emirates. The three islands became the subject of a dispute between the UAE and Iran, which it had controlled since 1971, and each party claimed sovereignty over them.
Despite the small size of the three islands, they are of very great strategic and economic importance for the two countries, as the islands overlook the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40 percent of global oil production passes daily. Whoever controls these islands controls the maritime traffic in the Gulf. This is precisely the scenario used by Iran on several occasions to destabilise the area with attacks on cargo ships following the political and economic sanctions imposed by the United States on the Persian state following America's withdrawal from the nuclear pact signed with Iran in 2015 in 2018, which limited Iran's atomic programme, particularly in terms of weapons. The Trump Administration denounced the Islamic Republic's failure to comply with the terms of the agreement and imposed sanctions on the Iranian country, including those relating to trade in crude oil, the Persian nation's main source of financing.