Persian identity Gulf

Tehran, April 29, IRNA – No matter what your nationality is, or whom you ask the direction, one should refer to the identity of the "Persian Gulf" south of Iran by its righteous name in order not to go astray. President Hassan Rouhani advised his American counterpart last year to ask the helmsmen of US fleets sailing back and forth in the Persian Gulf what the name of the waterway is on the map they hold in hand. That was a clever response to Donald Trump's repeated attempts to distort the name of the Persian Gulf, doomed to fail because he had to firstly change the real name in hundreds of millions of documents, maps, books and written references in his own country. The name 'Persian Gulf' which has been used for thousands of years to call the strategic waterway in southern Iran takes its roots from the old civilization of the country and the collective minds of the peoples who have occupied the region in at least past three thousand years ago. It has always been there in the oldest world maps and will remain so forever. However, some officials in the region along with some western officials occasionally use a distorted name to refer to the Persian Gulf which indicates their ignorance about the documents and maps produced by their own states. United Arab Emirates is one the states in the Persian Gulf region which has been accustomed to using the fake name 'Arabian Gulf' to refer to the 'Persian Gulf'. The deputy police chief of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in September 2018 published a picture of a 300-year old map on his twitter account to claim that Qatar is a territory belonged to Bahrain. Unknowingly but proving the truth, the map he published included the name 'Persian Gulf' which repeatedly was distorted by the very state's officials. The map published by Dhahi Khalfan dated back to; however, the oldest map showing the name 'Persian Gulf' dates back to 500 BC. Iran's ambassador to London Hamid Baeedinejad released a document in October 2017, belonging to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office which instructed the British officials in 1978 to use 'The Persian Gulf' for naming Iran's strategic waterway. Stressing that 'Iranian sensitivity over the description of the Persian Gulf is undiminished,' the document reads, 'The correct English name for this stretch of water is 'The Persian Gulf.' The use of any other term causes serious offence to the Iranians and has been known to prejudice contracts and negotiations in Iran.' The circular further stressed the British officials 'never' use other terms in their official communications to refer to the strategic waterway which lies in the southwest of Iran's Strait of Hormuz, the strategically and geographically important narrow strip in south of the country. Despite knowing the facts and truth in every historical documents, US officials still continue to discredit themselves with using fake name for the Persian Gulf. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, along with making several repetitive accusations against Iran, used a falsified phrase to refer to the Persian Gulf. Such behavior continues to be observed from the American officials while the United Nations has repeatedly emphasized on the correct name of the waterway. The UN in two notes registered as AD311/1GEN and LA45.8.2(c) respectively in February 1971 and August 1984 underlined that the international body uses the name 'Persian Gulf' to refer to the waterway southwest Iran in all of its documents and maps. In recent years, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution has also named the 10th day of Iranian Ordibehesht month, usually occurring on 30 April on the Gregorian calendar but 29 April this year, the day of the expulsion of the then colonialist Portuguese from the Strait of Hormuz as the 'National Day of the Persian Gulf' by the proposal of the Council for Public Culture to propagate the cultural and historical identity of Iran to other countries. Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish