Tiran Island

Island in Saudi Arabia

Tiran (جزيرة ثيران Jezîret Tīrān, Jazīrat Tīrān), and Yotvat Island, is a Saudi Arabian island that was formerly administered by Egypt. Sovereignty of the two Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, was ceded officially to Saudi Arabia as part of a maritime border agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The agreement was subsequently approved by the Egyptian Parliament and finally ratified by President Abd el Fattah el Sisi on 24 June 2017. The island is located at the entrance of the Straits of Tiran, which connect the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It has an area of about It was part of the Ras Muhammad National Park. The Straits of Tiran are Israel's only access from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Red Sea, and Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran on 22 May 1967 was the casus belli for Israel in the Six Day War. Tiran Island is of strategic significance in the area, as it forms the narrowest section of the Straits of Tiran, which is an important sea passage to the major ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel. Israel briefly took over Tiran Island during the Suez Crisis and again from 1967 to 1982 following the Six Day War. The island is inhabited only by military personnel from Egypt and the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO). Chisholm Point is a cape of Tiran Island. Some sources report that many beaches on the island are mined. On 9 April 2016, the Egyptian government declared that Tiran and Sanafir Island fall within the territorial waters of Saudi Arabia, as codified in the maritime border agreement signed with the government of Saudi Arabia on the previous day. The agreement needed to be ratified by Egypt's Parliament, and has reportedly been quashed by an Egyptian judge. A court in its final ruling rejected the deal and affirmed Egyptian sovereignty over the islands in January 2017. On Wednesday 21 June 2017, Egypt’s top court temporarily halted all court verdicts on the agreement to transfer the two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Finally, on Saturday 24 June 2017, President Abdel Fattah el Sisi of Egypt ratified the agreement that cedes sovereignty over the two Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabia. The earliest and latest dates mentioned in relation to Iotabe are given in relation to the participation of bishops of the island in the church councils: Macarius in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (in whose acts the diocese is listed as belonging to the Roman province of Palaestina Tertia), and Anastasius in a synod held at Jerusalem in 536. There is no mention of Iotabe in accounts of the Islamic conquests, suggesting that by then the island was uninhabited. The reference by Procopius to an autonomous Jewish community on the island of Iotabe until the 6th century figured in Israeli rhetoric during the Suez crisis and during and immediately after the Six Day War.

"Egypt and Saudi Arabia clarified their sovereignty claims to the islands in 1954, when Egypt informed the UN Security Council that the two islands had been Egyptian territory since the delimitation of the frontier between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1906." However, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel the islands had not belonged to Egypt before 1949. During World War II, the Egyptian forces on Tiran and Sanafir islands were part of the contingent of Egyptian troops protecting the Suez Canal, according to Egypt's representative at the 659th UN Security Council meeting on 15 February 1954. In the same meeting, Egypt's representative considered Tiran and Sanafir islands an integral part of the territory of Egypt since they have been under Egypt's administration since 1906.

The planned Saudi Egypt Causeway would pass through Tiran Island.