The gulf of Mazandaran
As a geographical, political and legal undeniable reality

1- A gulf is a large bay that is an arm of an large body of water. 
2- Countries customs show us that the gulf in the sea issues has a very important rule in such manners like as political, historical rights, economical and legal field. In fact countries expand their sovereign rights in the seas by their gulfs.
3- Generally the gulfs surrounding by one country land. Then we can interpretation the subject of “gulf” in UNCLOS 3 and other experience based on this principle that: “the land govern to the sea”
4- Maybe historical gulf has a special name or not. For example the Libyan gulf that situated in the Mediterranean sea has not clear name and such gulf like as Taranto valley in southern of Italy. 
5- The reason for identify of gulfs in law of the sea is that country's can increase their internal waters for many purpose like as littoral population security and such more. The one of important effect of this procedure is that countries baseline for delimiting purpose shifting to front section of their coastline.
6- International court of justice do not ignore Tunisian gulf(that named gulf of Gubes).
7- Italy, Canada, china, Russia, Philippine, India, Finland, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran are including in countries that use of this phenomena in their coastline.
8- Historical gulf reasons based on historical rights that identifying by other country. The area and the length of gulf entrance is not a key factor for identifying of historical gulf existence. For example Libyan gulf entrance length is 500 kilometer and Hudson gulf in Canada has a 3,200,000 〖km〗^2 area.
9- We can have a two type of interpretation for existence of gulf in Caspian sea. The first is that such names like as Mazandaran sea or Qazvin sea in the history named to the all body of water of Caspian sea. The second is that pervious name were introduced of southern part of Caspian sea that surrounding by traditional Iran border. Historical study proof that Russia USSR do not criticized this historical rights and Iran rights to this section.
10- It seems that Russia and Kazakhstan respect to historical or non-historical rights in the case of gulfs. Also we can sea such name as Gorgan gulf are used in many papers.

Author: Jafar Parnori Alkanvard
Source: International Institute of Khazar Sea Studies (IIKSS)