There are many areas of border disputes in the region of the Persian Gulf potentially as explosive as that of the Kuwait crisis of 1990-1991. The changing world order which manifested itself most tangibly in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union and the success of the unprecedented military operation of the US-led coalition in the Gulf introduced a new dimension to territorial and border disputes in a new era of security uncertainties in that region. The highlighted vulnerabilities of these changed circumstances in the Gulf region necessitate a more thorough study of the areas of territorial and boundary differences in that region. This study concentrates on territoriality and boundary differences of the maritime areas, where two major areas of differences need to be studied in more detail: the Iran-UAE differences on the ownership of three islands and the Qatar-Bahrain differences on a number of islands and shoals.
Since arguments of ownership of any geographical space rely heavily on historical foundations of territoriality in that geographical space, prominence has been given throughout this book to the history of emergence of states involved in these disputes and to the historical background to all disputed geographical localities covered.
