Shatt al-Arab Totally Explained

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The Shatt al-Arab (Arabic: شط العرب, literally River of the Arabs), or the Arvand Rūd (Persian: اروندرود, literally Arvand River), is a river in Southwest Asia of some 200 km (125 mi) in length, formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris in the town of al-Qurnah in the Basra Governorate of southern Iraq. The southern end of the river constitutes the border between Iraq and Iran down to the mouth of the river as it discharges into the Persian Gulf. It varies in width from about 232 m (760 ft) at Basra to 800 m (2 600 ft) at its mouth. It is thought that the waterway formed relatively recently in geologic time, with the Tigris and Euphrates originally emptying into the Persian Gulf via a channel further to the west.
   The Karun river, a tributary which joins the waterway from the Iranian side, deposits large amounts of silt into the river; this necessitates continuous dredging to keep it navigable.
   The region of Shatt al-Arab is considered to be the largest date palm forest in the world. In the mid-1970s, the region counted some 17–18 million date palms or a fifth of the world's 90 million palm trees. By 2002, more than 14 million, or 80 percent, of the palms were wiped out. In total, war, salt and pests destroyed approximately 14 million palms: around 9 million in Iraq and 5 million in Iran. Moreover, of the remaining 3–4 million palms, many are in poor condition.
   In Middle Persian literature and the Shahnama, the name Arvand is used for the Tigris, the confluent of the Shatt al-Arab. Iranians begun using this name specifically to designate the Shatt al-Arab during the later Pahlavi period, and continue to do so after the revolution of 1978-79.

Territorial disputes

Conflicting territorial claims and disputes over navigation rights between Iran and Iraq were among the main factors for the Iraq-Iran War that lasted from 1980 to 1988, when the pre-1980 status quo was restored. The Iranian cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr and the Iraqi city and major port of Basra are situated along this river.
Control of the waterway and its use as a border have been a source of contention between the predecessors of the Iranian and Iraqi states since a peace treaty signed in 1639 between the Persian and the Ottoman Empires, which divided the territory according to tribal customs and loyalties, without attempting a rigorous land survey. The tribes on both sides of the lower waterway, however, are Marsh Arabs, and the Ottoman Empire claimed to represent them. Tensions between the opposing empires that extended across a wide range of religious, cultural and political conflicts, led to the outbreak of hostilities in the 19th century and eventually yielded the Second Treaty of Erzurum between the two parties, in 1847, after protracted negotiations, which included British and Russian delegates. Even afterwards, backtracking and disagreements continued, until British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, was moved to comment in 1851 that "the boundary line between Turkey and Persia can never be finally settled except by an arbitrary decision on the part of Great Britain and Russia". A protocol between the Ottomans and the Persians was signed in Istanbul in 1913, but World War I canceled all plans.
The British advisors in Iraq were able to keep the waterway bi-national under the thalweg principle that has worked in Europe (see Danube River): the dividing line was a line drawn between the deepest points along the stream bed. All United Nations attempts to intervene as mediators were rebuffed. Under Saddam Hussein, Baathist Iraq claimed the entire waterway up to the Iranian shore as its territory. But in 1975, Iraq signed the Algiers Accord in which it recognized a series of straight lines closely approximating the thalweg (deepest channel) of the waterway, as the official border. In 1980, Hussein released a statement claiming to abrogate the treaty that he signed, and Iraq invaded Iran. (International law, however, holds in all cases that any bi-lateral or multi-lateral treaty can't be abrogated by only one party.) The main thrust of the military movement on the ground was across the waterway which was the stage for most of the military battles between the two armies. The waterway was Iraq's only outlet to the Persian Gulf, and thus, its shipping lanes were greatly affected by continuous Iranian attacks. When the Al-Faw peninsula was captured by the Iranians in 1987, Iraq's shipping activities virtually came to a halt and had to be diverted to other Arab ports, such as Kuwait and even Aqaba, Jordan. Later, and as the Persian Gulf War was looming, Saddam again recognized the Algiers Accord in order to appease Iranians before he could undertake an invasion of Kuwait.

Recent conflicts

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the waterway was a key military target for the Coalition Forces. Since it's the only outlet to the Persian Gulf, its capture was important in delivering humanitarian aid to the rest of the country, and also to stop the flow of illegal smuggling operations. The British Royal Marines staged an amphibious assault to capture the key oil installations and shipping docks located at Umm Qasr on the al-Faw peninsula at the onset of the conflict.
Following the end of the war, the UK was given responsibility, subsequently mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1723, to patrol the waterway and the area of the Persian Gulf surrounding the river mouth. They are tasked to make sure that ships in the area are not being used to transport munitions into Iraq. British forces have also trained Iraqi naval units to take over the responsibility of guarding their waterways.
On two separate occasions, Iranian forces operating on the Shatt al-Arab have captured British Royal Navy sailors who they claim have trespassed into their territory.

In June 2004, several British servicemen were held for two days after purportedly straying into the Iranian side of the waterway. After being initially threatened with prosecution, they were released after high-level conversations between British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kamal Kharrazi. The initial hardline approach was put down to power struggles within the Iranian government. The British marines' weapons and boats were confiscated.
In 2007, a seizure of fifteen more British personnel became a major diplomatic crisis between the two nations. It was resolved after thirteen days when the Iranians unexpectedly released the captives under an "amnesty."

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