Persian (or Arabian) Gulf Is Caught in the Middle of Regional Rivalries - The New York ... - 0 views
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Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been escalating on many fronts — over wars in Syria and Yemen, the Saudis’ execution of a dissident Shiite cleric and the Iran nuclear deal. The dispute runs so deep that the regional rivals — one a Shiite theocracy, the other a Sunni monarchy — even clash over the name of the body of water that separates them.
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Iran insists that it be called the Persian Gulf, and has banned publications that fail to use that name. Yet this riles Arab nations, which have succeeded in pushing various parties to use their preferred term — Arabian Gulf.
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his may be among the most minor of the disputes, but it speaks to the level of hostility and competition between the two, and is taken quite seriously by many with an interest in the region — including the United States Navy, which, for fear of alienating its regional allies, uses the term Arabian Gulf.
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Persian Gulf has been used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, from the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British.
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The push to call it the Arabian Gulf gathered steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s, propelled by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the historian Lawrence G. Potter wrote in the “The Persian Gulf in History.” In the 1960s, Arab countries made Arabian Gulf compulsory, and the Gulf Cooperation Council uses it.
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“It’s deeply emotional; it’s not simply semantic,” said Frederic Wehrey, an expert on gulf politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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Google Maps shows both terms, with Arabian Gulf in parentheses. But Google will show either Arabian or Persian Gulf to local users, depending on geolocation and language settings.