President Trump floated by changing the name of the Persian Gulf in the Arab Gulf before a trip to the Middle East next week, a move that raged Iran and its people.
“I will have to make a decision,” Trump said in the oval office on Wednesday. “I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I don't know if the feelings will be injured.”
Last week, the Associated Press reported that Trump planned to announce the rebirth on his tour in various Arab countries, which have been pressing for change for years.
The turquoise blue water has been called the Persian Gulf by at least the 550 BC, when the Persian dynasty of Ciro the Great ruled an empire that crossed India at the edges of Western Europe. The ancient Persia is now the modern Iran and all its southern coast extends along the Persian Gulf.
Iranian governments, returning to the pre-revolution era of the Shah, have robustly defended the Persian Gulf as the only legitimate name. So they have Iranians inside and outside the country, which consider the name as a fundamental part of their national and cultural identity.
By suggesting the change of name, Trump apparently made the impossible: to combine Iranians of all political, ideological and religious factions. They spoke in statements and posts on social media, condemning the idea of Mr. Trump.
Can Trump really rename the gulf?
Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the United States. But other countries must not honor these changes.
This year, it has issued an executive order to update the information system of the geographical names of the government in order to modify all the references for the Gulf of Mexico in the Gulf of America. (On Friday, President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the Mexican government sued Google for his decision to stick to the order of Mr. Trump.)
The US Board of Directors on the geographical names currently imposes the use of the Persian Gulf for the official activities of the United States.
On a global level, the international hydrographic organization works to standardize and track marine borders. But the organization told the New York Times this year that “there was no international agreement or a formal protocol for the appointment of maritime areas”.
How did the Iranians react?
The idea of Mr. Trump aroused condemnation from a large transversal section of Iranians, who are often divided on many topics.
“It goes beyond politics; it goes beyond the religious-religious divisions and ideologies the nation and its history, and has reached an agreement,” said the historian Touraj Darryaee, director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of California-Irvine. “Trump wants to negotiate with Iran or do you want to remove his national identity?”
Mr. Daryaee said that since ancient times the Iranians have defined their nation as “AB or Kakh,“ Which means “water and earth”. Two bodies of water – the Persian Gulf in the South and the Caspian Sea in the north – are deeply intertwined in the Iranian psyche as symbols of nationality.
Ahmad Zeidabadi, an eminent analyst from Tehran, published in X: “Only for Trump's desires and whims, the Gulf of Mexico will not become the Gulf of America, Canada will not join the United States, Greenland will not become a possession of the United States and the Persian Gulf will not make a false name.”
The Iranian national football team weighed with a Persian Gulf map and a trendy hashtag #Foreverpersiangulf on its official Instagram page.
Even the Iranian opposition figures expressed their displeasure.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah of Iran who supports Mr. Trump and encouraged him to abandon diplomacy with the government to Tehran, said on social media: “President Trump reported distorting history, if true, he is an insult for the Iranian people and our great civilization”.
What is the story of the Persian Gulf?
The name of the Persian Gulf was used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, by the time of the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British.
The push to call him the Arabian Gulf collected steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s.
The United Nations use the term the Persian Gulf. A document from 2006 from a working group of the United Nations found unanimity in the historical documents within the term, which according to him was coined by the Persian king Dariooush in the fifth century BC
Will this influence the Iran-USA nuclear interviews?
Iran and the United States have held three rounds of negotiations, mediated by Oman, for the nuclear program that advance from Iran, and are planned to meet again on Sunday.
The United States want to prevent Iran from arming its nuclear program and Iran wants to remove the penalties that have hindered its economy.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian senior diplomat and member of the country's nuclear negotiation team in 2015, said that if Trump renamed the Persian Gulf, he would have given a blow to the negotiations.
“He will only create distrust and encourage the watercourses in Iran who say that you cannot trust America,” said Mousavian in an interview.