ABSTRACT
From the early seventeenth century, the Caspian Sea was divided between Russian and Iranian spheres of influence. Iran was never a naval power in the Caspian Sea, and its activities were for the most part restricted to commercial navigation and to inshore fishing. The only exception was when Nader Shah (1736-1747) succeeded, despite Russian attempts at sabotage, to construct a shipyard on the Caspian coast in 1742 and to launch the first Iranian gunship in the Caspian Sea.1 For Russia, the Caspian Sea was the route to the south, giving easy access to Iran’s northern territories. Peter the Great established the first Russian naval base on the Caspian at Astrakhan in 1723 and occupied five Persian provinces on the south and east banks of the Caspian Sea. Even after the evacuation of northern Iran, under the Treaty of Rasht in 1729 Russia retained control over navigation and trade in the Caspian Sea. The Caspian route also enabled the Russian army to occupy the Iranian territories of Derbent and Baku in 1796, and to send troops to the Russo-Iranian war fronts during the Caucasian wars of 1804-1812 and 1826-1828.2
In April 1920, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan was proclaimed. The flotilla of the new Bolshevik regime continued to dominate the Caspian Sea.3 In August 1941 the Red Army occupied northern Iran; from then on, until the end of the Second World War, the Caspian Sea was used as a supply route to carry Allied aid to the Soviet Union.4 At the end of 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and four independent successor states emerged around the rim of the Caspian Sea-Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan. Thus, virtually overnight, the number of littoral states was augmented from two to five.
