Hours after Great Britain withdrew from the Gulf region in November 1971, the Imperial Iranian naval forces seized control of three strategic islands in the Gulf.
Crucial to the British Empire’s trade route to India, the region has been dominated by Britain since 1880. For almost a century, Britain had managed the region through treaties with local tribes, creating the “Trucial States” in a reference to the Arab sheikhdoms that signed protective treaties to eliminate piracy, protect trade, and eventually secure oil resources for Britain.
Building on historical rights to the Gulf islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, Iran, which had planned to step in immediately after Britain’s withdrawal, swiftly took over the islands on 30 November 1971.
On the other side of the Gulf two sheikhdoms from the then Trucial States had also claimed rights to the islands. The emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah claimed the Islands of Greater and Lesser Tunb, while the emirate of Sharjah claimed the Island of Abu Musa.
Outpowered by the Iranian Navy, the sheikhdoms yielded and reached a memorandum of understanding with Iran for shared control.
The Trucial States remained an informal British protectorate until the treaties were revoked on 1 December 1971, the same day that Britain officially departed the region. The following day, six of the sheikhdoms – Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain and Fujairah – formed the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which inherited the disputed islands at its birth.
The seventh emirate, Ras Al-Khaimah, joined on 10 February 1972.
Today, reports of a large-scale deployment of US ground forces to the region have fuelled talk that Washington could be preparing to seize some of the islands in the Persian Gulf that are strategic to the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has effectively controlled since the early days of the US-Israeli war on Iran over the past month.
While most of the reports focus on the Iranian Kharg Island, other islands, including the disputed three, are speculated to be possible US-Israeli miliary targets in the coming stage of the war.
While no such plan has been formally announced, the discussion reflects the enduring geopolitical weight of a narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
Since 1971, the disputed islands have been a barometer for Gulf and Arab dynamics with Iran. During political frictions, the names of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb signify “dispute”. When the tension subsides, the islands fade into the background, but they are never forgotten.
With the Gulf states condemning the Iranian strikes directed at their infrastructure, the anger has mounted over the past week. In the UAE, the tone has been notable.
“We will never be blackmailed by terrorists,” Abdullah bin Zayed, UAE deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, lashed out at Tehran on 23 March, while Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, criticised Iran’s “thuggery”.
As the Emirati official discourse escalated, the disputed islands were invoked.
According to Trita Parsi, a Washington-based expert on Iran-US relations, an increasingly likely scenario for the ground troops is that Trump will seek to take the three Iranian islands in the Gulf claimed by the UAE.
“Both pro-Israeli voices in the US and prominent Emirati accounts have been pushing this idea publicly for the past ten days,” he wrote on Facebook.
“Abu Musa in particular is a strategic island, situated in the middle of the strait. But it may no longer be critical given the manner in which Iran controls the strait via missiles,” he said.
If the idea is to trade the control of the islands for the opening of the strait, it would depend on the cost of not seizing the islands, but of keeping them, Parsi explained.
“The US Navy has kept itself 3,000 km away from Iran to avoid being hit by Iranian missiles. Abu Musa is only 70 km from the Iranian shoreline, and the Tunbs are even closer. Iran would rain down missiles and drones, likely killing a large number of US troops. As a result, Iran would likely not have to trade the islands. The US would simply abandon them because keeping them is too costly.”
But going for the islands carries some messaging and political benefits. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have been largely split by the war, he said, with Oman and Qatar striking separate deals with Iran.
“But the GCC has a unified position on the three islands in support of the UAE,” Parsi argued. “Making the war about the islands may be motivated by an attempt to push all the GCC states in support of the US-Israeli war, but under the false rubric that it is now about ‘liberating’ the islands.”
Although the islands had been a source of dispute between Iran and Britain since the early 20th century, marked by Iranian attempts to assert control in 1904 and 1923, they rose to prominence in GCC-Arab tensions with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, underscoring the fact that the dispute is not rooted in the ideology of the Islamic republic but in earlier territorial and strategic calculations by Iran.
For Iran, the islands were a means of securing the approaches to Hormuz and projecting regional power at a time when Britain was departing and the United States was encouraging Iran to act as a stabilising force in the Gulf.
In the decades that followed, the dispute over the islands became a recurring political instrument, particularly during periods of heightened tension. The Arab states, including the newly formed UAE, frequently raised the issue in regional and international forums, framing it as a case of occupation.
During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the Gulf Arab states, aligned against Iran, amplified these claims as part of a broader effort to isolate Tehran.
Yet outside such moments, the issue often receded into the background. Economic interdependence, diplomatic pragmatism, and shifting regional priorities meant that while the sovereignty dispute was never resolved, it was not always front and centre.
Trade continued across the Gulf, and even as the rhetoric flared periodically, the islands themselves remained relatively quiet militarised outposts.
That pattern has shifted again in recent years. The UAE has increasingly highlighted the dispute in international settings, calling for negotiations or arbitration. This renewed focus has coincided with broader geopolitical alignments, including the UAE’s deepening ties with Washington and its normalisation of relations with Israel.
Within this context, the islands take on new significance. Any hypothetical US effort to secure or neutralise Iranian control over key points in the Strait of Hormuz would inevitably involve these territories.
They are not just symbols of a historical dispute but potential operational assets in a conflict scenario involving maritime security, energy flows, and regional deterrence.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: