Geopolitics and Reform under Khatami

Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh is professor of geopolitics at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, and senior research associate of the Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Centre of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Iran’s foreign and regional policies are increasingly determined by geography and national interest. Iran’s efforts to break free from US-imposed economic and strategic siege have drawn domestic and international attention to the geopolitical significance of Iran’s location between two of the world’s key energy depots: the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Moreover, the US strategy of “containment” helped prompt Iran to modify its purely ideological stance of the 1980s and give priority in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century to its national interests in conducting its foreign relations. However, the chief factor underlying the far-reaching changes in Iran’s foreign policy is the fundamental and structural changes taking place in the country’s domestic political life. Since a nation’s foreign policy should—especially in a period of democratisation—mirror its domestic political changes, an examination of the developments influencing Iran’s internal politics is likely to assist understanding of the shift in its foreign policies.

The Iranian Awakening

What is happening in Iranian domestic life today, two decades after the Islamic Revolution, seems to be a belated realisation of the goals set by the country’s constitutionalism of the early twentieth century. If the Constitutional Revolution (1905–11) succeeded in awakening the Iranian elite, the Islamic Revolution and its aftermath appear to have caused a universal awakening. Events after the Islamic Revolution, events which further weakened the shaky rule of law, the imposition upon Iranian society of an eight-year war, and the biting effects of the US economic and strategic siege, have resulted in the awakening of the Iranian people.

 

After the Islamic Revolution, the United States began to implement a strategic encirclement of Iran, which added a strong sense of insecurity to the country’s deepening economic hardship. Tehran has viewed this encirclement as follows: The United States helped Pakistan, directly or otherwise, to create the Taliban in Afghanistan in order to destabilise Iran’s eastern flank. Washington directly or indirectly supported the claims of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the Persian Gulf islands of Tunbs and Abu Musa, which amounted to a direct threat to Iran’s territorial integrity.¹ It armed and encouraged Iraq to light the flame of war on Iran’s western flank. It supported Israeli–Turkish military co-operation, which has resulted in Israeli surveillance flights over Iran’s western borders, hence destabilising her north-western sector. US support for the triangular strategic co-operation of Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan is viewed in Tehran as a serious threat to Iran’s three Azeri provinces. This policy, coupled with the determination to prevent Caspian oil and gas being piped through Iran to the outside world, and the attempt to isolate Iran in the evolving strategic alignments in the Caucasus, Caspian and Central Asia, has completed the strategic encirclement of Iran on its northern flank.

 

These strategic measures were perceived as threats in Iran and aroused territorial awareness among Iranians, thus strengthening national unity. In fact, no phenomenon in the last two hundred years has done as much as the Iraqi invasion and the UAE’s territorial claims to raise this awareness and unity. The result has been a political awakening of the kind needed to spark the process of democratisation. Iran’s oil nationalisation of the early 1950s prompted a widespread growth in political and national consciousness; the events of the 1980s and 1990s have caused a universal awakening. (Other significant contributing factors in this awakening are the expansion of literacy and the rise in urban dwelling, which began in the 1960s.)

The Mechanisms of Democratisation

In its aim of democratising Iranian society, the Constitutional Revolution was not completely successful, mainly because the kind of democracy it promulgated was an imported idea, copied from Europe, which could impress only the elite. A rural and traditional society, over 90 per cent of whose population was illiterate and unaware of the modern world, could not digest this European idea in its original forms. In other words, there was neither the necessary capacity for democracy in Iran, nor had the mechanism of supply and demand for democracy been mobilised. In the three subsequent decades, from 1909 to 1940, although the elite was struggling for democracy, the country was under foreign occupation, and foreign powers would not allow the Iranian people to exercise its own rule in its own society.

 

Despite claims to the contrary, neither were the years 1940–53 years of democracy in Iran. This period was also one of foreign occupation, and clashes among the Iranian elite severely damaged the prospects of democratisation. Differences of political view translated themselves into personal disputes, and personal vengeance replaced efforts to implement political ideas. The locomotive of democracy was thus completely derailed. The masses, still content with their rural economy and traditional way of life, lacked the necessary awareness or motivation to improve their lot in a new political system. They were aware neither of the significance of voting, nor of their right to participate in the management of their country’s political affairs. The huge vacuum resulting from lack of popular participation even allowed some members of the elite involved in the democratisation process to close down in 1953 the Majlis (parliament), the most important symbol of democracy. In other words, what was occurring in these years was not the exercise of democracy, but efforts to create democracy. However plausible these efforts might have been, the important point is that Iranian society did not have the three necessary mechanisms to realise democracy. Today, however, the wheels of these mechanisms have begun to turn in that general direction:

1. Political Supply and Demand

The current comprehensive national awakening has produced demands for democracy throughout Iranian society. Today, the elite and the masses speak the same language and to the same end: they all want fundamental, far-reaching reforms that can address the problems preventing or delaying the implementation of democracy. This movement seeks to address three major issues: (1) the nature and extent of the union of state and religion; (2) popular participation in the political affairs of the country on the basis of meritocracy; (3) realising the “rule of law” in domestic matters and allowing national interest to guide foreign policy. This development suggests that the demand for democracy has gained real ground and that it is a grass-roots desire. That is to say, the tree of democracy in Iran seems to be growing with its roots firmly planted in the culture and values that form Iranian identity.

2. The Combat of Ideas and the Start of Political Dialogue

 Demand for democracy automatically activates another mechanism, one essential for effecting the balance of power in society. This mechanism is the clash of views, which gives birth to dialogue among the forces that shape political events in a country. A society that awakens and begins to experience a diversity of expressed opinions among political groups and factions experiences the clash of opinions. In other words, democracy, in a natural process, is the result of a balance of power in society. This balance of power does not materialise except through the clash of ideas and opinions among political groups, which leads to the rule of law as the ultimate arbiter among them.

 

Iranian society is currently experiencing a clash of views and opinions among political forces which have begun an extensive dialogue with each other. Those involved in this dialogue may be categorised into two main groups: traditionalists and reformers. This extensive dialogue, with all its rough and smooth features and occasional sharp exchanges, has become a serious process for political development. The student demonstrations of the summer of 1999, and the closure of several newspapers in the spring of 2000, had the combined effect of deepening the dialogue. When the Sixth Majlis (elected in February 2000) was preparing to ease restrictions on the press, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an edict in August 2000 preventing any alteration to the press law. His edict had the unintended effect of bringing back into the heart of national debate the issue of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic legal authority)—a pillar of Iran’s system of Islamic rule. Iran has entered a new phase of political progress involving Iranians from all walks of life. This process is shaping a new political identity or a new nationalism, which is not the ideology of the state. Moreover, a positive aspect of this process is that the state is endeavouring, slowly but surely, to come to term with the new developments.

3. The Transfer of the Will of the People to the State

Another mechanism for democracy is “the transfer of the will of the nation to the state for the management of territorial affairs”.² This mechanism can work only through democratic elections, elections that reflect the will of the people. The presidential election of May 1997, which resulted in a huge victory for the reformist candidate Mohammad Khatami, was unquestionably a watershed in the formation of Iran’s new political identity in both domestic and foreign policy. The level of participation was unprecedented in Iran and in the Middle East, as was the impact of the vote on Iranian society. Almost all those eligible to vote (about thirty-seven million) took part in the election, and the overwhelming majority spoke in one voice and for one purpose: “political reform”. In consequence, the voters were awoken to the reality of the political power they hold in their hands.

 

Subsequent elections proved that a fundamental change had taken place: there is a process at work, and this process has passed the point of no return. A notable aspect of this change is that political developments are occurring in the absence of the direct influence of the highly charged ideological tendencies of traditional political parties. Yet this same process is mobilising the demand for the evolutionary function of political parties of a kind that could address themselves to the new needs of society.

 

In conclusion, the mobilisation of the three mechanisms for democracy may confidently be termed the most significant turning-point in Iran’s political history and in the country’s emergence as a new political identity. Should this development continue unjeopardised by military ambitions or foreign influence, it will enable the Iranian people to control their political destiny. It will lead to the realisation of the rule of law as the ultimate arbiter in Iranian society.

Iran’s Changing Foreign Policy

To assess realistically the impact of Iran’s domestic political development on its relations with the outside world, one must be aware that the country’s transformation is universal in scope and fundamental in depth. The Iranian popular awakening is producing deep shifts in the nation’s political life. Having realised their power to change their country’s political destiny by voting in an emerging home-grown democracy, Iranians are forcing substantial and meaningful alterations in their country’s foreign policy. This is occurring in parallel with a radical economic liberalisation, the pace of which albeit is slow owing to economic and socio-political constraints resulting from a long period of underdevelopment. The government is pressing ahead with a programme for a free-market economy, working to a reasonable timetable for universal privatisation and examining the possibility of creating a regional economic grouping, preferably with the Arab states and the countries of Caspian–Central Asia.

 

A crucial aspect of these developments is that Iran’s foreign policy is increasingly being shaped by its domestic political agenda and its national interests instead of ideological dictates, as should be the case in a democratising society. Ideology no longer determines Iran’s foreign and regional relations. This has become particularly evident in Iran’s relations with the Arab world and with regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

 

Iran’s transformed geopolitical outlook is the result of rapid changes in the global system, which in turn have effected fundamental changes in Iran’s foreign policy priorities. In its new approach, Iran attaches notable significance to its regional role, discerning two major geopolitical regions on its southern and northern flanks.

 

To the south, Iran has long been embroiled in wide-ranging political and territorial disputes with her Arab neighbours. Chief among these disputes have been the border and territorial quarrels with Iraq and the UAE’s claims to the Iranian-controlled islands of Tunbs and Abu Musa. Nevertheless, most Arab–Iranian differences are no more intense or complex than those that long existed among the British, French and Germans. If these European nations have learnt to give their common interests priority over their mutual differences, certainly the Iranians and the Arabs can learn to do the same.

 

Arabs and Iranians have in the past few decades experienced a barrage of propaganda accusing regional states of harbouring ill intentions against each other. This has resulted in some quarters concluding that salvation is to be found only in external domination of the region, at the expense of self-respect and self-reliance. But the question arises whether external powers have done anything at all to help resolve regional disputes and create a regional arrangement for peace and co-operation. Have they not in fact constantly been engaged in fomenting political and territorial disputes in order to create and maintain the “justification” for external military domination of, and political interference in, the affairs of the region?

 

Such reflections are leading Iran and most of its Arab neighbours in the south to bridge the gaps created by past disputes. Iran began to alter its outlook thus in the early 1990s, but the introduction of “détente” in its foreign policy had to wait until after the presidential election of 1997, when Tehran began to appreciate that “dialogue among civilisations” can become a reality only if it begins with intra-civilisational dialogue. That is to say, peaceful co-existence among nations of different civilisations can occur only when there is peaceful co-existence and co-operation among nations of the same civilisation. This fundamental change in Iran’s foreign policy stance, which began under the Rafsanjani presidency (1989–97) and hugely expanded during President Mohammad Khatami’s first term (1997–2001), coincided with the growing influence of the regionally oriented views of Crown Prince Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, which soon affected most neighbouring Arab states.

 

Arabs and Iranians enjoyed a short period of co-operation in the 1970s after the British left the region and the Americans had not yet established their military dominance there.³ It is important to recognise that Iranians and Arabs succeeded in achieving a regional balance and co-operation in the 1970s mainly because both sides then enjoyed the goodwill and friendship of the United States. Washington was following the Nixon doctrine of non-interference in regional conflicts, leaving regional security around the world to friendly powers. It is equally important to note that in today’s emerging geopolitics the legitimate interest of the West in the continued and safe flow of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf must be recognised. A return to the period of understanding and co-operation within the framework of any regional arrangement will require securing the goodwill of the West through reassurances that its legitimate interests will be safeguarded. Regional goodwill is a prerequisite for resolving differences. Conversely, politicising territorial disputes at the expense of regional goodwill and co-operation will, of course, be counterproductive and can only result in the continued justification of external domination, which is itself a source of insecurity. Despite these realities, the UAE has campaigned for many years now to politicise its territorial differences with Iran, as Iraq did in the past.

What Rapprochement Would Mean

Iran’s changing foreign policy approaches are bound to influence the country’s neighbours in one way or another, especially if relations normalise with the United States. Should those relations normalise, Iran’s neighbours will be affected variously, perhaps as follows:

 

• The Levant Arabs, namely Syria, the Palestinians and Lebanon, may stand to lose Iran’s material support in their struggle against Israel, which up to now they have seen as an additional means of exerting pressure on the US–Israel axis. Iran has already announced a policy of non-intervention against the Arab–Israeli peace process, even though it opposes it.

 

• Iraq might be negatively affected because it stands to lose its co-sufferer under the “dual containment” policy of the United States. Saddam Hussein would be deprived of his only geostrategic leverage with the United States, a leverage which has been instrumental in preventing Washington from toppling him. That leverage is the alleged need to preserve his regime as a bulwark against revolutionary Islamic Iran.

 

• The UAE might stand to lose the support of certain US politicians who have directly or indirectly encouraged its claims to the islands of Tunbs and Abu Musa in order to maintain regional pressure on Iran. However, others in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) would benefit from normalised US–Iran ties. Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar have for some years now been pressing the United States to modify its approach towards Iran. For these states, as well as others in the GCC, namely Kuwait and Bahrain, what matters most in their relations with Iran is not Iran’s stance on the Arab–Israeli conflict, but ensuring regional peace and stability and the continued safe flow of oil and gas.

 

• Others in the Arab world, particularly countries such as Jordan, Egypt and the rest of North Africa, stand to benefit from the end of Iran’s current attitude towards Arab–Israeli relations. They might wish Iran to return to its pre-revolutionary days on this issue, but in its balancing act between the Arabs and Israel, Tehran is unlikely to go further than establishing a working détente with Israel. At the same time, these states would, of course, want Iran to extend some forms of support to the Arabs.

 

• More than any other country in Iran’s neighbourhood, Turkey stands to lose significantly from a normalisation of US–Iran relations. With the assistance of Israel, Turkey in recent years has made considerable political and economic advances at Iran’s expense in the Caucasus, the Caspian and Central Asia. A determined US drive to isolate Iran in the Caspian–Central Asia region paved the way for Ankara’s inroads, even though Turkey does not have a geographical presence there. Benefiting from the vacuum caused by the enforced absence of natural competition from Iran, Ankara has been able to further its pan-Turkish ideas in a region where they will undoubtedly harm the prospects of a political and strategic balance being attained. Moreover, the US determination to prevent the region’s oil and gas from being piped through Iran has left the difficult, insecure and uneconomic Turkish route as the best alternative. Clearly, a US–Iranian rapprochement would not further Turkey’s ambitions in the Caspian–Central Asian region.

Caspian–Central Asia

To the north, Iran faces a vast expanse of territories, stretching from the Caucasus in the west to Central Asia in the east, at once sundered from and connected to each other by the Caspian Sea. This amalgam of the Caucasus, the Caspian and Central Asia may be seen as one geopolitical region, which for the sake of convenience may be referred to as “Caspian–Central Asia”.

 

All countries which split off from the former Soviet Union in Caspian–Central Asia are landlocked, with no direct or easy access to international maritime trade. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, together with Iran and Russia, border the Caspian Sea. This particular geography is conducive to the development of maritime trade among the said five littoral states. Such trade would not, however, resolve the lack of direct maritime access to international markets. The only practical solution to this problem is to link all these republics and Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman by road, rail and pipeline networks.

 

In December 1991, Kazakhstan and Iran signed an agreement providing for the Central Asian republics to extend their railway networks to the Persian Gulf across Iran. Another agreement signed in June 1995 between Iran, Turkmenistan and Armenia provides for the expansion of overland trade among the three countries. March 1996 saw the linking of the Central Asian railway network to that of Iran. Leaders or representatives of fifty countries attending the inauguration ceremony acknowledged Iran’s geographical position as Caspian–Central Asia’s main bridge to the outside world. At the same time, Iran can facilitate direct access to Caspian–Central Asia for the oil-producing Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, which may choose, wisely, to become involved in an adjacent region that will rival their own in the expanding global market. Similarly, as a land bridge connecting Caspian–Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, Iran may prove pivotal to India’s commercial undertakings in the area. Tehran has suggested that India fund a 700-km railway connecting the cities of Bafq in central Iran to Mashhad in the east to shorten the Central Asia–Indian Ocean connection by several hundred kilometres. This would give the Indian subcontinent a competitive edge in Caspian–Central Asia over its rivals.

Pipeline Politics

From an economic point of view piping Caspian–Central Asian oil and gas to international markets via Iran is unquestionably the most practical and competitive option. This is the shortest, safest and cheapest route, particularly where exports to the ever-expanding energy market of the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Far East are concerned. Moreover, Iran’s wealth of manpower skilled in petroleum technology, its developed transportation and shipping infrastructure, its established refineries and port facilities, and its network of oil and gas pipelines, constitute a considerable technical and logistic advantage which cannot be matched by any other alternative route that might be considered.

 

The overall advantage of an Iran-bound pipeline network for exporting oil and gas from Caspian–Central Asia is widely acknowledged. Several agreements have been signed to utilise this route for exports to the Indian subcontinent, China, the Far East, Europe and Australia.⁴ There was even a start to the overland transportation of some Turkmenistan oil through Iran and Turkey to the Mediterranean, and Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan began exporting some of their crude through Iran in swap deals, before the United States blocked these arrangements. The United States has openly and categorically stated that the idea of Iranian involvement in the affairs of Caspian–Central Asia—where Iran has a geographical presence—is not to the liking of Washington and its Turkish and Israeli allies.⁵ Indeed, the US goal of diverting Caspian–Central Asian oil and gas exports from their natural route seems to be dictated solely by a desire to benefit Washington’s Turkish ally and thereby establish some sort of strategic control over the lines. This will provide the United States and its regional allies with a new strategic leverage to be used against whomever they deem fit, just as they use it at present against Iran.

 

A further impetus to this strategy is the US fear that Iran’s geographical potential, as the only land bridge connecting the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, will secure Iran a major role in the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century. Washington deems this to be a major strategic threat which must be averted.⁶ The United States is pursuing such a manifestly anti-Iranian strategy in Caspian–Central Asia regardless of the fact that geography dictates a natural role for Iran in the region. This strategy is being relentlessly followed even though Iran’s process of democratisation is fundamentally changing the country’s foreign policy, with pursuit of national interest replacing ideological considerations.

 

On the other hand, as increasing international attention is paid to security-related matters in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea—the two main energy depots of the early decades of the twenty-first century—the significance of Iran’s location between these two regions, and the inevitability of its natural influence on issues of regional security, become more evident. Moreover, Iran is gradually addressing itself to the realities of the new global geopolitics by announcing and implementing détente in her foreign policy and by offering a new and constructive form of relations among nations through the proposal of a “dialogue among civilisations”. Nevertheless, the United States still seems to prefer to continue its confrontational approach towards Iran and its legitimate national interests by trying to isolate her in both regions. Washington’s persistence in this approach goes against the conventional wisdom that regional security is best ensured by the integration of all players. US allies in the Persian Gulf have demonstrated the truth of this wisdom by expanding co-operation with Iran for peace and stability. For example, Saudi Arabia and other GCC members are contemplating strategic co-operation with Iran, and in an interview with the Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat on 1 June 1999, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah defended Iran’s arms programmes, saying Iran had the right to protect itself. Nonetheless, it is US–Iranian relations that are the key to safeguarding security in west Asia as well as to resolving Iran’s economic and strategic concerns.

Concluding Remarks

Contrary to perceptions in the West and in the Arab world, the issue of relations with the United States is very much in the public domain in Iran. This is largely because of two factors: first, the expansion of popular political participation in the country; and second, recent public statements on the subject by US political leaders. The following may be seen as the main factors influencing Washington’s recent overtures towards Iran:

 

• Iran’s geographical location between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and Iran’s potential to connect its northern and southern geopolitical depths by allocating individual ports in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman to each of the landlocked states of Caspian–Central Asia for their exclusive and autonomous use under Iranian sovereignty. Such an undertaking would not only give Iran a unique geopolitical position in the global order, but it would provide the countries of Caspian–Central Asia with direct and easy access to international trade routes. It would also give the Arab countries to the south of Iran direct and easy access to the energy markets of Caspian–Central Asia. These are considerations that the United States can hardly afford to ignore, especially given that the strategy of isolating Iran by trying to divert Caspian oil and gas export routes away from it has had little success.

 

• Iran’s process of democratisation and its increasing level of popular participation. These cannot escape the attention of the United States, and they bring home the message that Washington is no longer dealing with the ayatollahs alone in Iran, but is facing the Iranian people.

 

• Political pressure exerted on the United States by domestic and international elements. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and more recently Bahrain are actively encouraging Washington to repair its relations with Iran as they see Arab–Iranian co-operation as the main factor in regional stability. The European Union believes the resolution of US–Iranian differences will produce major economic opportunities. On the US domestic front, American oil companies and other industrial firms as well as a growing number of political personalities, such as former secretary of state Cyrus Vance and former Middle East ambassador Richard Murphy, are criticising Washington for failing to mend relations with Iran. They are urging the administration to come to terms with Iran and its new political identity.

 

Ordinarily, normalisation of relations between two belligerent states is possible only in three phases:

 

1. A declaration of détente. President Khatami has effected such a declaration in his foreign policy and in his proposal of a “dialogue among civilisations”. Washington nevertheless persists with the Israeli-desired policy of levelling various kinds of accusations against Iran.

 

2. Implementation of confidence-building measures. In this respect, Iran has modified its Middle East policies, most notably those concerning the Arab–Israeli peace process. Again, the United States has taken no real step that would help build confidence between the two countries.

3. Establishment of diplomatic relations.

Regarding confidence-building measures, friendly words from political leaders may start the process of normalising relations, but friendly words with no substance can hardly impress a people who remain the target of some of the most drastic economic sanctions ever imposed. Responding to then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s admission on 17 March 2025 that her country’s policy of arming and encouraging Iraq to invade Iran in 1980 was “short sighted”, some Iranians invited her to draw a positive conclusion from it, namely by preventing a repeat of the same “short sightedness” with regard to US support for UAE claims to the Iranian islands. The people of Iran have made it clear that they expect the United States to consider implementing the following real measures to build confidence between the two nations:

 

• Abandoning the anti-Iranian policy of diverting Caspian–Central Asian oil and gas pipelines away from Iran, and allowing the force of economic imperatives to take its course.

 

• Freeing Iran’s frozen assets in the United States, and agreeing to a serious and fundamental review of the one-sided and arbitrary use of these assets in favour of US citizens and companies.

 

• Abandoning the so-called D’Amato Law that imposes penalties on foreign corporations investing in the Iranian oil and gas sector, and lifting all economic sanctions and embargos against Iran.

 

• Abandoning the policy of direct or indirect support for and encouragement of claims to Iranian territories and similar policies that put Iran’s territorial integrity and national unity in question. 

Endnotes

1. See Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Security and Territoriality in the Persian Gulf (London: Curzon Press, 1999), section IV.

 

2. Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Geopolitical Ideas and Iranian Realities (Tehran: Nashir-e Nei, 2000), chapter 1.

 

3. See Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, “Regional Alliance in the Persian Gulf: Past Trends and Future Prospects”, Iranian Journal of International Affairs 10, nos. 1 and 2 (spring/summer 1998).

 

4. See Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, “Iranian Perspectives on the Caspian Sea and Central Asia”, in Central Eurasian Water Crisis: Caspian, Aral, and Dead Seas, ed. Iwao Kobori and Michael H. Glantz (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1998), pp. 105–24.

 

5. See remarks by Glen Race, US Department of State, as reported in Ettelaat International (London), 27 February 1995: “Iran Most Logical Route to Export Caspian Oil”.

 

6. Remarks by John Wolf, US special energy envoy for the Caspian, in a seminar on “The Political and Economic Prospects in the Caspian Sea Region”, Wilton Park conference, London, 6–9 March 2000.