AVASH NEWS: How much is Iran’s share of the Caspian Sea? 13 percent or 20 percent? If you think that the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, signed in August 2018 in Aktau, Kazakhstan, has marked one of these two figures as Iran’s share of the Caspian Sea, a misunderstanding must be resolved from the beginning: neither of these two figures is mentioned in the Aktau Convention as Iran’s share of the sea. So, what is the document that recently made headlines in Iran, and why was it written?
It goes back to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Until then, there were only two coastal countries along the Caspian Sea: Iran and the Soviet Union. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of Russia, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan emerged alongside Iran, and the Caspian Sea suddenly shifted from a body of water shared between two countries to one shared by five countries.
Here, a big problem emerged: What must be the rules of the Caspian Sea? Where should the borders be placed? How far are ships allowed to move? Who owns the oil and gas on the bed of the Caspian Sea? How should fishing be carried out? What countries must allow the establishment of pipelines, and which military forces are allowed to be present in the Caspian Sea?
Answering these questions led to the beginning of negotiations, which lasted for more than two decades. Finally, in August 2018, the presidents of the five coastal countries signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in Aktau, Kazakhstan. The convention defined important rules. Every country can have territorial waters spanning 15 nautical miles, and after that, there would be a 10-mile zone designated for fishing.
The convention also set rules about shipping, the environment, the use of resources, pipelines, and cooperation among coastal countries.
But the convention could not solve an important issue: the Caspian Sea was not divided among the five countries. There is no provision in the convention that says Iran’s share of the Caspian Sea is 50, 20, 13, or 11 percent. The demarcation of the bed and subsoil of the Caspian Sea requires separate deals among countries that have adjacent coasts and are located next to each other.
Therefore, the approval of the convention itself cannot mean “Iran’s 13 percent share.” However, the convention is not just about oil and borders. One of its most important dimensions is the security of the Caspian Sea. According to some paragraphs of the convention, the military forces of non-coastal countries must not be present in the Caspian Sea, which means the security of this expanse of water must remain under the control of the same five countries.
This paragraph is also strategically important for Russia because it prevents the Caspian Sea from becoming an arena for the military presence of the United States or other non-coastal powers.
For Iran, particularly amid escalating military tensions in the region, this principle can have special importance.
Therefore, Aktau is not a document on the “division of the Caspian Sea.” It is a framework to define the rules of the game in the Caspian Sea.
However, a question still remains unanswered. If the convention has not established Iran’s share of the sea, where have the figures 50, 20, 13, and 11 come from? Was Iran once the owner of 50 percent of the Caspian Sea and then lost its share? To answer this question, we should go back a century, to the agreements between Iran and the Soviet Union that were transformed completely after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
