Last week, the interior ministers of the five Arab states across the Persian Gulf responded in kind with a joint statement proclaiming: “The Gulf is Arab and will remain Arab forever.”
The mutual outburst threatens to poison relations forever. But the Islamic Republic sees the problem and has tried to resolve it by the quickest means possible. It has simply denied that Gen. Hassan Firuzabadi, the chairman of the joint staff of the Iranian armed forces, ever said anything about the entire Persian Gulf being Iranian.
Three days after Firuzabadi made his remarks and as Arab editorial indignation heightened, Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Kuwait, Mohammad Shahabi, said Firuzabadi “was quoted falsely. There is no word in his speech suggesting the Persian Gulf belongs to Iran.”
Firuzabadi’s office, however, has been silent. And, if he was misquoted, an awful lot of reporters listening to his speech all misquoted him identically.
Last Wednesday, the interior ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries—Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman—met and issued a joint statement saying, “The Gulf is Arab and will remain Arab forever.” The ministers said Firuzabadi’s comments were “provocative, irresponsible and contrary to the principles of good neighborliness.”
Relations around the Persian Gulf have soured markedly in recent weeks since the Shia protests erupted in Bahrain. But on both sides of the waterway, most officials appear to be trying to bottle the antipathy. For example, Arab diplomats have been countering mutterings by non-diplomats urging the Arab states to break diplomatic relations with Iran.
Iran may soon have its hands full however. On Tuesday, Mehdi Eqrarian, head of a group called the Islamic Revolution Supporters Society, announced that the group plans to send a convoy of ships with humanitarian aid to Bahrain to aid the protesters. He said the convoy would leave Bandar Abbas May 16. The fact that he gave both a specific date and a departure port suggested that his remarks were not just hot air. The question now is whether the government will spike the plans.
The Persian Gulf is primarily international waters belonging to neither Iran nor any of the Arab states. The states bordering the waterway have territorial waters that extend out to a maximum distance of 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) from the shoreline.