This week, Tehran hosts the 22nd meeting of representatives from the five
littoral states in the Caspian Sea region - Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - working overtime to put together a new
"convention for the legal regime of the Caspian Sea".
As a followup to last October's summit of leaders of the littoral states in
Tehran, the two-day meeting is unlikely to reach any substantial agreement,
although it is a good warmer for a related economic summit of Caspian states to
be held in Russia this summer.
Already, Iran's point man on the Caspian Sea, Mehdi Safari, has criticized the
lack of adequate preparation for this week's meeting, calling for more
preparatory meetings to hammer out differences
among the five countries on what is undoubtedly one of the most contentious
issues in the region, that is, how to divide up the world's largest lake.
In his opening remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stated that
the 1920 and 1941 Iran-Soviet Union accords, which identify the Caspian as an
Iran-Soviet "common sea", still serve as the legal frame of reference,
representing a slight hardening of Iran's position. This in light of the severe
criticisms of Mottaki's Foreign Ministry by some members of parliament (Majlis)
who have questioned Iran's diplomacy in the Caspian region.
Since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of three new
independent states around the Caspian Sea, who have for the most part carved
out the sea among themselves, the issue of the legal regime of the Caspian has
been thrown into turmoil by post-Soviet politics, this while many people in
Iran continue to insist that Iran is entitled to 50% of the Caspian, pointing
at the terms of the above-said accords.
However, Iranian officials have distanced themselves from such claims, and
Mottaki himself has brought some popular anger on himself by stressing that
Iran's share of Caspian has never been 50%, that this is illogical, since
Iran's coastline is only some 17% of the entire Caspian coastline, and that
neither of those accords or any other accord or official document endorses that
position. What is more, Mottaki has explicitly stated that Iran's exploitation
of the Caspian has never gone beyond 11.3% of the sea.
Concerning the latter, aside from fishing, Iran actually has not had an active
energy policy in the Caspian Sea, partly because of the priority given to its
oil and gas riches in the Persian Gulf, which are relatively easier to access
than the ones in Iran's deep water section of the Caspian, and partly due to US
sanctions inhibiting foreign companies from joint ventures with Iran.
But, with US and United Nations sanctions on Iran escalating the pressures on
it, particularly in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Iran is now seeking an
outlet for trade and investment in the Caspian region, attracting potential
partners with lucrative production-sharing agreements. Brazil's Petrobras is
reportedly in the concluding stages of a deal to acquire liquefied natural gas
from Iran in exchange for energy exploration operations in the Caspian Sea.
Simultaneously, Iran is looking to expand both its oil-swap agreements, for
example with Kazakhstan, as well as its pipeline system that includes the
Neka-Rey pipeline, which has a current capacity of 170,000 barrels per day.
Iran and Russia are also expanding their energy ties and Russia's giants,
Gazprom and LUKoil, are involved in Iran's oil and gas projects and, most
likely, will be further engaged in joint projects with Iran, despite the fact
that the two countries are to some extent each other's competitors for
alternative energy routes in the region.
For now, however, the cooperative side of Russia-Iran relations has taken the
upper hand, in light of last October's summit in Tehran, which dealt with a
host of other issues, such as regional security, and culminated in a joint
communique that banned the presence of any foreign ships or military forces in
the Caspian Sea.
With the issue of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) eastward
expansion on every one's mind, Russia and Iran have found a geostrategic common
denominator in the Caspian that from Iran's point of view binds Moscow and
Tehran to the extent that Moscow might be willing to accommodate Iran on the
thorny issue of legal ownership, perhaps more than in the past.
The problem with that scenario, on the other hand, is that Russia, Azerbaijan
and Kazakhstan have already divided the Caspian in their respective sectors
and, as a result, Iran's best hoped for share right now is well below 20% (as
called for by the foreign ministry).
Unable to ink any agreement that would be deemed a sellout by nationalistic
Iranians, the Iranian government is thus torn between conflicting domestic and
foreign priorities and, for now at least, has settled to duck the bullet by
avoiding the so-called "percentage issue" via its insistence on the "common
sea" or "condominium" approach to the ownership of Caspian waters, in contrast
to the division of the sea's seabed resources.
One key advantage of the condominium approach is that it retains the contiguity
of Russia and Iran, who lack a territorial border and yet have a maritime
border in the Caspian. This is an important consideration, given Iran's formal
bid to join the security pact known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO, whose member states are Kazakhastan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). In case the SCO admits Iran, which presently enjoys
observer status, then the organization's purview will cover a larger territory
encompassing (a bigger parcel of) the Caspian region, indeed an important
consideration in the current NATO-SCO calculations.
It is noteworthy that Iran is officially averse toward a new cold war and some
former Iranian diplomats, such as Iran's ex-ambassador to Germany, have called
for selective Iran-NATO cooperation. This, too, may be a reaction to Russia's
stated new willingness to cooperate with NATO, for example as a conduit for
NATO supplies going to Afghanistan, and demonstrates Iran's flexibility that
aims to address the concerns of China and Russia, the two main pillars of the
SCO, regarding Iran's membership. This would complicate the SCO's agenda if
Iran was not in sync with the overall pattern of policies and orientation of
the organization - that is still in the formative stage.
In conclusion, the irony of Iran stressing the validity of old agreements
between it and the former Soviet Union is precisely that it is in effect a
catalyst for new agreements and even arrangements that may not quite have the
logic of a new cold war yet, by all indications, are not completely bereft of
its flavor either.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping
Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author
of
Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction. He is a
professor of international relations, Bentley College.
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