Issue 15

 Babak Layeghi

“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”
-Clarence Darrow

Over the past couple of days I have been receiving emails from friends describing another horrific event taking place.  No, I am not talking about the atrocities taking place in Fallujah, or any new facts that the Bush administration is cooking up in order to attack Iran, but it’s to do with the magazine, National Geographic.  In its new production of a world atlas, National Geographic has decided upon itself to not only name the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf, but to list three islands in the region: Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb as occupied by Iran.

One must wonder why it is that National Geographic has decided to depict these islands as occupied by Iran, even though it is a clear violation of United Nation’s documents.  On the other hand it is surprising to learn that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not depicted as territories occupied by Israel in this new atlas.

Even more drastic is the fact that for the first time to my knowledge, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has taken a stance over this issue.  Publications of National Geographic have been banned in Iran as have their journalists.  Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght, the cultural ministry’s foreign media director was quoted as saying, "As a reaction, we are banning their journalists from entering Iran and the distribution of their publications until they correct this.”  

It is interesting to note that in the early years of the Islamic Republic, the regime was in favour of calling the Persian Gulf, simply the Gulf, in order to win over Arab support to their cause.  However, I guess after the majority of the Arab world supported Iraq in its war with Iran, the regime has finally decided to protect its own national interests.

It is rather important to know the history of the Persian Gulf in order to truly understand this issue.  And Dr. Farhang Mehr is the perfect candidate to reveal the history behind the name of the Persian Gulf in his book, A Colonial Legacy, he writes, “Claudis Ptolemaeus, the celbrated Greco-Egyptian mathematician/astronomer in the second century, called it “Persicus Sinus” or Persian Gulf.  In the first century, AD, Quintus Curticus Rufus, the Roman Historian, designated it “Aquarius Persico” – the Persian Sea.  Another Greek Historian, Flavius Arrianus called it “Perscionkaitas” – Persian Gulf.  Strabo, the renown Greek geographer/historian in the fifth century AD used the same denomination.  During the Sassanian Dynasty, the Persian Gulf was invariably called the “Persian Sea.”  After the Arabian conquests of Iran, for eight centuries the Persian Gulf was called “Bahre Farsi” meaning Persian Sea.  This was the term used during the time of the prophet Mohammad and the Four Rightly Guided caliphs.  The designation of “Persian Gulf” was also used during the Umayyads and the Abbasids.  The Ottomans regularly called it either “Persian Gulf” or “Persian Sea”.”

Thus one can see as far back as recorded history can take us, the Persian Gulf has always been referred to as the Persian Gulf by many different groups.  And in more recent times, the United Nations with 22 Arab member states has officially declared the name of the body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Persian Gulf.  The first announcement was made through the document UNAD, 311/Qen on March 5, 1971 and the second was UNLA 45.8.2 on August 10, 1984.

Like the majority of Iranians, I too began to email friends and family over this issue and urged them to email National Geographic with their complaints.  

And while surfing the net I came across two sites, which I found to be very interesting.

The first site I came across was, The Persian Gulf Taskforce, http://www.persiangulfonline.org/index.htm, an organization who sole dedication is to preserving the correct name of the Persian Gulf.

And the second site, which I found to be interesting, was a petition,
http://www.petitiononline.com/persian/petition.html, that wishes to bring an end to National Geographic’s recent propaganda.

While reading up on this matter I also learned the very first time the Persian Gulf was called the Arabian Gulf was by Abdel Nasser.  Nasser was loved throughout the Arab World due to his Pan-Arab vision.  It was his drive of Arab nationalism, which is impelling the rich states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to use their petro-dollars to buy out corporations, people, and countries in order to change the name of the Persian Gulf to suit their nationalistic fervors.

At the end of the day I just wonder what it is that feeds our nationalistic endeavors. Maybe I will be lucky enough in my life time to see a cure invented that will finally put to rest this nationalistic disease that resides in all of us.