Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands
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The Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands are two small, largely uninhabited islands in the Persian Gulf. Per John Kiriakou, the islands belonged to the emirate of Sharjah within the United Arab Emirates and were, in his description, the size of a city block, holding nothing but sand. In a 1990s incident, Iran occupied the islands, planting flags with a handful of soldiers on each.

As a CIA analyst assessing the incident, Kiriakou predicted the UAE would not go to war with Iran over the islands, since they legally belonged to Sharjah rather than oil-rich Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and Sharjah's economy was so heavily dependent on trade with Iran (Kiriakou put the figure at roughly 70%) that confrontation would have been self-defeating.

See also

- John Kiriakou
