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Iran’s Claim to the Sovereignty of Bahrayn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2017

Majid Khadduri
Majid Khadduri*
Affiliation:
School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University,Washington, D. C.
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Extract

The Oil Nationalization Act passed unanimously by both houses of the Iranian Parliament in March, 1951, raised once more the long-standing issue of Iran's claim to sovereignty over Bahrayn. The Iranian extremists, from both the left-wing Tudeh Party and the right-wing Fida'iyan Islam group, at first criticized Parliament for its silence about the oil of Bahrayn but, when the law for the expropriation of the Anglo-Iranian Company was enacted in April, they demanded that these laws should in like manner be applied to the Bahrayn Petroleum Company, jointly owned by the Standard Oil Company of California and the Texas Company, on the grounds that the Bahrayn Islands form a part of Iranian territory.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1951 , pp. 631 - 647
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1951

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References

1 For text of the note, see League of Nations Official Journal, September, 1930, p. 1083.

2 Ibid., August, 1934, p. 969.

3 The British Government had already objected to the grant of oil concessions to other Powers, but the United States State Department, pressing for equal opportunities for American interests, secured British agreement to the participation of American interests in the oil of Bahrayn. For an exchange of notes on this matter see Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1929, Vol. III(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1944), pp. 80-82.

4 For the geography of the Bahrayn Islands, see J. Theodore Bent,“The Bahrayn Islands in the Persian Gulf,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XII (January, 1890), pp. 1-19; Captain A. W. Stiffe, “Ancient Trading Centers of the Persian Gulf, VII: Balirem,” The Geographical Journal, Vol. XVIII (September, 1901), pp. 291-294; Maynard Owen Williams, “Bahrein: Port of Pearls and Petroleum,” The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. LXXXIX (February, 1946), pp. 195-210; Abbas Faroughy, The Bahrein Islands (New York, 1951) ; J. Oestrup, “ Al-Bahrain,” Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. I, pp. 584-585.

5 This treaty, known as the Treaty of Jidda, was based on an earlier similar treaty signed by Ibn Saud and Britain on Dec. 26, 1915, but the earlier treaty did not elicit a protest from Iran.

6 British Parliamentary Paper (1927), Cmd. 2951. See also A. J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1928 (London, 1929), Appendix I, pp. 439-440.

7 League of Nations Official Journal, May, 1928, p. 605.

8 Ibid.

9 A copy of this letter was sent to the Secretary General of the League of Nations onFeb. 25, 1928, for communication to Member States of the League of Nations for in-formation.

10 See Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq (London, 1951), pp. 240-246.

11 A. J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1925 (London, 1927), Vol. I, pp 539-543; ibid., 1934 (London, 1935), p. 223.

12 For texts of these two notes, see League of Nations Official Journal, May, 1928, p 605; ibid., September, 1928, pp. 1360-1363.

13 See section 3, below.

14 For the text of the Chamberlain notes, see League of Nations Offieial Journal, May, 1928, pp. 605-606; ibwJ., May, 1929, pp. 790-793.

15 The Bruce agreement, it seems, had been cited by the Iranian Government in a num- ber of former exchanges of letters, such as those of 1906 and 1907, but the British Government had invariably stated that the Bruce agreement under no circumstances implied recognition, since it was promptly repudiated by both parties. See League of Nations Official Journal, May, 1928, p. 607.

15a This conclusion has been confirmed by an examination of the full text of the correspondence, which was made available to the writer by the British Foreign Office after this article went to press.

16 Ibid., p. 606.

17 M. Malek Esmaili, Le golfe persique et les íles de Bahrein (Paris, 1936), pp. 200204.

18 See translation of the arbitrai award in this JOURNAL, Vol. 26 (1932), pp. 390-394.

19 Publication of the International Bureau of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1928), reprinted in Scott, Hague Court Reports (second series), p. 84; also in this JOURNAL, Vol. 22 (1928), p. 867.

20 Publications of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Series A/B, No. 53.

21 Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk (ed. M. J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1879-1901), Series I, Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, pp. 213, 745-747, 1630, 1952-1953.

22 Oestrup gives the date 1507 as the beginning of Portuguese rule (The Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. I, p. 585) which seems to be the source of the date given in the Iranian note of Aug. 2, 1928 (League of Nations Official Journal, September, 1928, p . 1361).

23 Al-Nabhani, Tarikh al-Bdhrayn (Cairo, 1924); Amin Bihani, Muluk al-Arab (Beirut,1929, 2nd ed.), Vol. II,Chs. 5-6

24 For a discussion of this schism in the Islamic society of the sixteenth century, see A. J . Toynbee, A Study of History (London, 1934), Vol. I , pp. 346-402.

25 Cited by A. T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf (Oxford, 1928), p. 192.

26 See text of the treaty in C. U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads (Delhi, 1933), Vol. XI, pp. 245-247

27 Ibid., p.233.

28 Aitchison, op. cit., Vol. XI, p. 191

29 Ibid., pp. 234-236.

30 Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson, England and Russia in the East (London, 1875), pp. 109-111; Aitchison, op. cit., p. 192.

31 Text in Aitchison, op. cit., pp. 236-237.

32 Ibid., p. 237.

33 Ibid., p. 238

34 Ibid., p. 196

35 See text, ibid., p. 239.

36 For a discussion on what constitutes an Islamie territory, see Abdur Bahim, The Principies of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Madras, 1907), pp. 395-396; Majid Khaduri, The Law of War and Peace in Islam (London, 1941), pp. 19-20.

37 See Sir Thomas Arnold, The Caliphate (Oxford, 1924), pp. 70-76; A. Sanhoury, Le Califat (Paris, 1926), pp. 3 ff.

38 Even when the Ottoman Sultans ceded sueh territories as the Crimea (1774), Cyprus (1878), Egypt (1882), and Tripoli (1912), the “spiritual” authority of the Caliph was recognized by the Powers to continue over the Muslims who remained under foreign rule. See Arnold, op. cit., pp. 163-183. This practice of the separation of the “ spiritual ” from the “secular” powers of the Caliph, which is not feasible in Muslim legal theory, was resorted to by the Ottoman Sultan in order to maintain sovereignty over lost Islamie territories. See C. A. Nallino, Notes on the Nature of the Caliphate in General and on the Alleged Ottoman Caliphate (Bome, 1919).

39 See Majid Khadduri, “Islam and International Law,” in Islamie Literature (Jan- uary, 1951), Vol. III, pp. 19-21.

40 “The conquest of Algeria by France,” says Lorimer,“was not regarded as a viola- tion of international law. It was an act of discipline which the bystander was entitled to exercise in the absence of the police; and the justiflcation for the present interference of France in Tunis and our own in Egypt, must be sought in the extremely rudimentary character which still belongs to what is beginning to be called the European Concert.” (James Lorimer, Institutes of the Law of Nations (Edinburgh, 1884), Yol. II, pp. 160-161.)

41 In the same convention it was also provided that the protecting states were entitled to establish stations, roads, railways, inland steam navigation, telegraph lines, and the maintenance of restrictions on the importations of flrearms and ammunition. See W. E. Hall, A Treatise on the Foreign Powers and Jurisdiction of the British Crown (Oxford, 1894), pp. 204-207.

42 Robert R. Robbins, “The Legal Status of Aden Colony and the Aden Protectorate,” this JOURNAL, Vol. 33 (1939), pp. 714-715.