Saudi vows no military deployments on Red Sea islands

By Mohamed Mahmoud

CAIRO

Saudi Arabia has vowed not to engage in any military activity on or near the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, sovereignty over which was recently ceded by Egypt to the oil-rich kingdom.

On Tuesday, Egypt's official state gazette published a presidential decree (dated June 24) formally ratifying a controversial maritime border demarcation agreement ceding sovereignty over the two islands to Saudi Arabia.

The decree was accompanied by a letter (dated April 8, 2016) signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (then deputy crown prince) asserting “Saudi Arabia’s compliance with international law, especially the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982”.

Referring to the strategic Straits of Tiran -- which the two islands straddle -- as an “open international waterway”, the letter also includes a Saudi promise not to deploy any military forces on Tiran and Sanafir, the security of which is to be guaranteed by strictly “non-military” forces.

The letter goes on to state that both Saudi Arabia and Egypt would cooperate with the multinational forces mandated with overseeing the two islands under Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

According to the agreement’s terms, Egypt does not have the right to deploy military forces on or near the two islands, despite its earlier sovereignty over them.

In April of 2016, Cairo and Riyadh signed a controversial border demarcation agreement by which sovereignty over the two islands would be transferred to Saudi Arabia.

In June of last year, Egypt’s parliament approved the agreement despite widespread public disapproval amid accusations that Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi was “selling” Egyptian territory to Saudi Arabia.

Since the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, in a 2013 military coup, Riyadh has been the chief patron -- politically and economically -- of al-Sisi’s repressive regime.