A gulf by any other name

It's known as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf. But careful where, when and which you use.

Tom HundleyMarch 15, 2010 05:40Updated May 30, 2010 12:26

A sailor watches Iran's first domestically made destroyer, Jamaran, on patrol off the southern shores of Iran in the Persian Gulf during inauguration maneuvers, Feb. 21, 2010. (Ebrahim Noroozi/Reuters)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — With domestic opposition challenging the legitimacy of the last election and the rest of the world ganging up on its nuclear ambitions, the Iranian regime is understandably touchy these days.

Little wonder it blew a fuse when a Greek flight attendant working for a Tehran-based budget airline made the mistake of referring to the body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Arabian Gulf instead of the Persian Gulf.

From now on, any airline that allows its employees to make such an egregious mistake will be banned from Iranian airspace for 30 days; repeat offenders will have their aircraft grounded in Iran and their flight permits to the country revoked, according to a decree issued last month by Hamid Behbahani, Iran’s transport minister.

Why the fuss? Perhaps because in a region where naming it is owning it (Israel or Palestine?), Iran doesn’t want to take any chances.

Persia is the ancient name for Iran and Persian Gulf is the most widely accepted reference for the body of water in question — and has been since the fifth century B.C. by when it was given that name by Greek geographers.

But in recent years some Arabs have started calling it the Arabian Gulf. They argue that most of the countries that line its shore are Arab. (True, but as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president not famous for his tact, likes to point out, most of these Arab countries are “little countries.”)

The warning shot fired across the bow of the airlines is only the latest in what has become another Middle East war of attrition. Earlier this year, the Islamic Solidarity Games, scheduled to take place in Tehran next month, were canceled when Arab countries pulled out in protest over the design of the games’ medals, which incorporated the term Persian Gulf.

Even the venerable National Geographic Society has been drawn into the dispute.

When the society published the latest edition of its World Atlas in 2004, it used Persian Gulf as the primary name, but also included Arabian Gulf in parentheses and smaller type as a secondary name.

That drew the ire of Iranians around the world, who bombarded the society with complaints and cancellations. The Iranian government banned the sale of National Geographic magazine and barred its journalists from working in the country until the “error” was corrected.