A Historical Analysis of the Border Treaties Dealing with the Shatt Al-Arab Waterway

Abstract

Articles dealing with the state of the Iran-Iraq War since its inception in 1980 tend to deal mostly with topics such as specific offensives, the threat to international security, the threat to world oil supplies, world opinion, military analysis, etc. Comparatively few articles have attempted an in depth analysis of the long history of border disputes along the Shatt al-Arab. Of those articles that trace the roots of the conflict most are brief and are usually used as the introduction to the meat of the article. My research on the territorial aspect of the conflict began with the reading goof an article by Peter Hunseler entitled, "The Historical Antecedent of the Shatt al-Arab Dispute." The bibliography included references to a few original sources, which helped significantly in the task of developing the history of the area. No single source could be found that discussed all of the conflicts, or even a majority of them. Different treaties were mentioned in various articles and some of the writings included direct quotes form them, but the actual treaties were difficult to find among the available sources. Bibliographies, treaty indexes and historical abstracts were throughly scoured enabling me to locate most of the significant treaties. Many could not be found, but according to some sources, those treaties basically reaffirmed the previous ones.