TEHRAN – The Iranian government has reaffirmed its insistence on the use of the name ‘Persian Gulf’ for the strategic waterway separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, rejecting recent U.S. signaling and regional moves to bolster alternative terminology. The assertion, delivered by a government spokesperson this week, underscores Tehran’s ongoing use of geography and historical narrative as instruments in its broader quest for regional legitimacy.
The renewed message follows references to United States policy—under President Donald Trump and after—where the term ‘Arabian Gulf’ has periodically surfaced in official communications, reflecting sensitivities among Arab Gulf monarchies. According to the Iranian government, such attempts do not merely represent a semantic dispute but rather a concerted campaign to dilute Iran’s historic connection to the region and undermine its legitimacy at a time of intensified regional competition and Western-backed alliances.
The term ‘Persian Gulf’ has deep historic roots extending back thousands of years in maps, treaties, and academic references. Only in the latter half of the twentieth century, paralleling the rise of Arab nationalism and the reshaping of regional alliances after decolonization, did the contested terminology gain diplomatic salience. For Iran, defending the name is both practical and symbolic, speaking to sovereignty, continuity, and perceived resistance to Western and Arab rival blocs.
The linguistic dispute has grown more prominent in parallel with shifting regional realities. U.S.-led diplomatic and security frameworks, the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab states, and increased Israeli-Arab cooperation have challenged Iran’s influence across the Middle East. Tehran’s adversaries view the regime’s narrative campaigns as extensions of its proxy strategy—a network of Iranian-backed organizations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, which project power against Israel and America’s allies.
These tensions have escalated against the backdrop of the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre—the deadliest antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust—when Iran-backed terrorists from Gaza infiltrated Israeli territory, murdering and abducting hundreds of innocent civilians. Israel responded with the large-scale ‘Iron Swords’ war in Gaza, targeting terror infrastructure while confronting ongoing threats from the Iranian axis across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The regional contest thus encompasses not only battlefield realities but also the struggle for historical and moral legitimacy before the world.
For Iran, preserving the ‘Persian Gulf’ name feeds both external messaging and domestic unity, rallying the population behind narratives of resistance and ancient heritage. Iranian officials denounce any use of alternate terminology as ‘fabricated legitimacy,’ indicting the West and regional adversaries for what they see as an effort to delegitimize the Islamic Republic. Tehran’s media machine and diplomatic channels have made the issue a recurring theme, often coinciding with military tensions or steps perceived to diminish Iran’s role in regional security architectures.
Internationally, the United Nations and most global bodies retain ‘Persian Gulf,’ reflecting both the historical record and substantial academic consensus. Yet, U.S. government agencies and some Gulf Arab countries promote ‘Arabian Gulf,’ seeking to align cartographic and official language with the priorities of key American partners. This heightened attention is seen by Tehran as a microcosm of wider attempts to alter the Middle East’s map—politically, militarily, and symbolically—in ways that counter Iranian strategic aims.
Equally, the Persian Gulf remains a flashpoint in kinetic terms. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) regularly challenges Western and Gulf navies in the vital Strait of Hormuz, a narrow chokepoint through which a significant share of global oil flows. The region has seen vessel seizures, drone attacks, sabotage operations, and standoffs involving U.S., British, and Arab military assets. Such encounters highlight how questions of language and identity are entwined with the reality of armed conflict, proxy activity, and the enduring instability imposed by Tehran’s policies.
While Iran frames the debate as defense of history and rights, critics—including Israel and its allies—point to the regime’s sponsorship of terror, regional destabilization, and systematic human rights abuses as the real sources of delegitimization. Israel’s military actions are focused on defending its population and sovereignty in the face of sustained existential threats from Iran and its network of regional proxies—a distinction grounded in international law and underscored by judicious attribution of responsibility for attacks and atrocities.
The Iranian government’s position that ‘changing the name of the Persian Gulf reveals a lack of legitimacy’ is thus not merely rhetorical—it is part of a wider contest in which language, history, and symbolism are marshaled alongside more conventional tools of power. As long as Iran sustains its campaign of proxy warfare and ideological resistance to regional normalization, such disputes are likely to continue reflecting and fueling the larger conflict.
This episode crystallizes a key aspect of the contemporary Middle East: the contest for influence extends from physical battlefields to the symbolic realm, with Iran’s leaders eager to conflate challenges to narratives of identity with existential threats to the regime. Against a backdrop of ongoing hostilities, shifting alliances, and the struggle between state sovereignty and terror organization aggression, even the naming of geographic features becomes a measure and metaphor for the wider war.
In summary, while the United Nations and historical consensus uphold the ‘Persian Gulf’ designation, Iran’s regime seizes on disputes over nomenclature to reinforce its self-image as both besieged and timeless, emphasizing continuity in the face of what it views as Western and Arab efforts at encirclement and erasure. For Israel, clarity in history and language is as vital as clarity on the battlefield, forming part of a broader campaign to defend truth and moral order in a region undermined by Iranian-backed terror and revisionist ambitions.
