US President Joe Biden’s Saturday announcement on reaching an agreement with Saudi officials regarding peacekeeping forces, which include US troops, exiting strategically located islands in the Red Sea has once again shed light on the presence of international forces in this vital and strategic region.
It also stirred questions about what the agreement means and what local and regional repercussions it could produce.
In order to understand the reasons behind international forces existing on the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, it is necessary to return to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty under US auspices in 1979, which was followed by consultations and attempts to establish an “international multinational force” on the Red Sea islands.
According to the official website of the Multinational Forces and Observers, it was because of the inability to obtain the UN Security Council’s approval to deploy a UN peacekeeping force in Sinai that the parties to the treaty negotiated a protocol in 1981 for establishing a multinational force as an alternative.
Egypt agreed to cede sovereignty of Tiran and the neighboring island of Sanafir to Saudi Arabia back in 2017.
Yahya Kadwani, member of the defense and national security committee of the Egyptian parliament, believes that Biden’s announcement of the agreement on the exit of his country’s forces and the international forces from the islands of Tiran and Sanafir comes in the context of a Egyptian-Saudi pact to demarcate the maritime borders and return the two islands to Saudi sovereignty.
“There is no longer a need for the continued presence of international forces on these two islands,” Kadwani told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“The agreement serves the announced plans to develop the two islands as investment destinations,” he added, referring to how the two islands will benefit from the Saudi mega project, NEOM.
