Oil diplomacy in the Caspian. The rift between Iran and Azerbaijan in summer 2001

Sabahi's article is in the third part of the book, which concernes the economic aspects of transition. The opening of the newly independent states to the outside world has fuelled competing interests in neighbouring and western countries. Oil and gas resources have generated a new geopolitics in the region that hampers any attempt at regional cooperation. The most obvious dispute centres on the Caspian Sea's oil resources. Farian Sabahi highlights how the financial and trading interests at stake in the Caspian Sea have established a new "Great Game" in the region which profoundly reconfigures the regional and international diplomacy of the neighbouring states.