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Evolution of the Post-soviet Caspian Sea Legal Regime

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The Dynamics of Iranian Borders

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Abstract

Despite more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union and several conventions and meetings, Caspian littoral countries have been unable to agree on the Sea’s legal regime . Geography, self-allocations of coastal regions, the race to develop massive oil and gas reserves, and the presence of trans-regional powers have all contributed to disparate views on possession and the determination of boundary lines. This chapter reviews successive agreements between Iran and both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union . This is then followed by a discussion of sundry reasons for the failure of littoral countries to reach a consensus on a new legal regime with a special focus given to political and economic competition between regional and trans-regional players.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that the eighteenth-century contracts cannot be considered official contracts because they did not have the features of an official document. See (Asadi-kiya 1995).

  2. 2.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union , according to International conventions on government succession, newly independent littoral states must accept past Iranian obligations, especially in relation to territorial (border) contracts and communal waters. Therefore, Turkmenistan , Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan announced at the Almaty Conference that they would adhere to the obligations of the former Soviet Union but later adopted a different policy. See Bavand (2008: 10). Consequently, and considering the extent of the Caspian Sea ’s coastline, they are attempting to redefine the legal status of the Caspian Sea as a sea rather than a lake. See Kumar (2009: 13).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law, Applied Art and Culture Center, Science—Education University, Nowshahr, Iran

    Abdollah Baei Lashaki

  2. Department of Political Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Guilan, ‎Rasht, Iran

    Masoumeh Rad Goudarzi

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  1. Abdollah Baei Lashaki
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  2. Masoumeh Rad Goudarzi
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Correspondence to Abdollah Baei Lashaki .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Islamic Civilization, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Mansoureh Ebrahimi

  2. Department of Political Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Guilan, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

    Masoumeh Rad Goudarzi

  3. Faculty of Islamic Civilization, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Kamaruzaman Yusoff

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Baei Lashaki, A., Rad Goudarzi, M. (2019). Evolution of the Post-soviet Caspian Sea Legal Regime. In: Ebrahimi, M., Rad Goudarzi, M., Yusoff, K. (eds) The Dynamics of Iranian Borders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89836-0_4

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