The Persian Gulf naming dispute concerns the gulf known historically and internationally as the Persian Gulf, after Persia (the Western exonym for Iran) is involved in an ongoing naming dispute. In connection with the emergence of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism in the 1960s, the usage of the toponym "Arabian Gulf" () as well as just "Gulf" increased.
Overview
This body of water was referred to as the Persian Gulf by Arab historians and geographers, including the Arab Christian writer Agapius, writing in the 10th century.
According to authors Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda in their work Selective Remembrances, Sir Charles Belgrave (British adviser to the ruler of Bahrain) was "the first westerner to use and advocate the name 'Arabian gulf', first in the journal Soat al-Bahrain (Voice of Bahrain) in 1955." Mahan Abedin of The Jamestown Foundation agrees with this, noting that Arab countries used the term "Persian Gulf" until the 1960s. However, with the rise of Arab nationalism during that decade, some Arab countries, including the ones bordering the Gulf, adopted widespread use of the term (al-Khalīj al-ʻArabī; Arab Gulf or Arabian Gulf) to refer to this waterway. Teymoor Nabili (a senior presenter for Al Jazeera English) said "ironically, among the major drivers of the movement for change were Arab perceptions that Iran, driven by Washington, had supported Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973". This, coupled with the decreasing influence of Iran on the political and economic priorities of the English-speaking Western World, led to increasing acceptance, both in regional politics and the mostly petroleum-related business, of the new alternative naming convention "Arabian Gulf" in Arab countries.
The capture of Baghdad by the Ottoman Empire in 1534 gave Turkey access to the Indian Ocean via the port of Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf. This coincided with the early mapmaking efforts of Gerard Mercator, whose 1541 terrestrial globe attempts to give the most up-to-date information, naming the gulf Sinus Persicus, nunc Mare de Balsera ("Persian Gulf, now Sea of Basra"). However, on his world map of 1569, the name is changed to Mare di Mesendin (after the peninsula Ra's Musandam, in modern-day Oman), while his rival Abraham Ortelius, for the world atlas of 1570, opted for Mare El Catif, olim Sinus Persicus (after the Arabian port of Al Qatif), but labelled the entrance to the gulf the present-day Strait of Hormuz as Basora Fretum (Strait of Basra). Among all this confusion, the old name gradually reasserted itself in the 17th century, but Turkey still uses the name "Gulf of Basra" () in Turkish today.
Following British attempts to establish control over the seaway in the late 1830s, the Times Journal, published in London in 1840, referred to the Persian Gulf as the "Britain Sea", but this name was never used in any other context.
Proposed alternatives
The matter remains very contentious as the competing naming conventions are supported by certain governments in internal literature, but also in dealings with other states and international organizations. Some parties use terms like "The Gulf" or the "Arabo-Persian Gulf". Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 some people in Islamic groups suggested the use of "Islamic Gulf" or "Muslim Gulf". The originator of the term Islamic Gulf is not known, while some people suggest that prominent figures of the early years of the Islamic republic including Ruhollah Khomeini, Mehdi Bazargan, and Sadegh Khalkhali may have supported the idea. During his May 1979 visit to the UAE, Khalkhali suggested the term "Muslim Gulf". The idea was quickly abandoned after Iran was invaded by its predominantly Muslim neighbor, Iraq, in the Iran-Iraq War.
In Arab countries the terms "Gulf" and "Arabian Gulf" are preferred:
Iranian viewpoints
Iran only uses the term "Persian Gulf" and does not usually recognize the naming when it is referred to as "Arabian Gulf" or just the "Gulf" or by any other alternative.
In a 1974 interview by Mike Wallace in 60 Minutes, the last Shah of Iran himself preferred the term "Persian Gulf" while talking to Wallace. In February 2010 Iran threatened to ban from its airspace foreign airlines, especially those from the Gulf region, who did not use the term "Persian Gulf". In 2011, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a speech to the United Nations General Assembly during which he said that the only correct name of the sea between Iran and the Arabian peninsula was the Persian Gulf, and he dismissed the use of any other names as "illegitimate and void".