The Origins of the Arab-Iranian Conflict Nationalism and Sovereignty in the Gulf between the World Wars

The interwar period marked a transition from a Gulf society characterized by symbiosis and interdependency to a sub-region characterized by national divisions, sectarian suspicions, rivalries and political tension. In this study, Chelsi Mueller tells the story of a formative period in the Gulf, examining the triangular relationship between Iran, Britain and the Gulf Arab shaykhdoms. By doing so Mueller reveals how the revival of Iranian national ambitions in the Gulf had a significant effect on the dense web of Arab-Iranian relations during the interwar period. Shedding new light on our current understanding of the present-day Arab-Iranian conflict, this study, which pays particular attention to Bahrain and the Trucial states (United Arab Emirates), fills a significant gap in the literature on the history of Arab-Iranian relations in the Gulf and Iran's Persian Gulf policy during the Reza Shah period.

Introduction; 1. States and tribes in the pre-modern Gulf; 2. British policy in the Persian Gulf between the world wars; 3. The rise of Reza Khan and Iran's Persian Gulf policy, 1919–1925; 4. Reza Shah's Persian Gulf policy, 1925–1941; 5. The Trucial States, Iran and the British; 6. Bahrain, Iran and the British; Conclusion.

Chelsi Mueller is research fellow in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she lectures on conflict and conflict resolution. She is the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals including Iranian Studies, the Journal of Arabian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and the Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.