May 26, 2018
Ali-Akbar Velayati (photo), the senior foreign policy adviser to the Supreme Leader, says the effort to recast the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” is a plot masterminded by the United States, Britain and Israel. Actually, the renaming effort dates to the 1950s, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt pushed it as part of his Arab nationalist ideology. The US government’s Board on Geographic Names states that the proper name is Persian Gulf, contrary to what Velayati says. However, the US Navy—and especially the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain—uses Arabian Gulf. Commander Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told The New York Times two years ago, “It is commonly understood to be a friendly gesture of solidarity and support for our host nation of Bahrain and our other Gulf Cooperation Council partners in the region to use the term they prefer.”
