Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
A war of words among Gulf states is heating up – and the war is over what to call that body of water. Arab states refer to it as the Arabian Gulf. Iran insists that it’s the Persian Gulf. And the disagreement is a big deal. For example, the Islamic Solidarity Games were to be held in Iran in April. But they were scrapped because of the dispute. And now, Iran is threatening to ban foreign airlines from flying into its airspace unless they call the waterway the Persian Gulf. Marco Werman talks with Abbas Milani, the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University.

• BBC coverage
• Geography professor William Rowe on the Gulf’s name

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  A war of words among Gulf States is heating up and the war is over what to call that body of water.  Arab states refer to it as the Arabian Gulf.  Iran insists that it’s the Persian Gulf and the disagreement is a big deal.  For example, the Islamic Solidarity Games were to be held in Iran in April but they were scrapped because of the dispute and now Iran is threatening to ban foreign airlines from flying into its air space unless they call the waterway the Persian Gulf.  Abbas Milani is Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University.  Now the ruling is for airlines to actually change their in-flight monitors to read Persian Gulf instead of the insulting Arabian Gulf or just Gulf.  If you see the Gulf, Abbas Milani or Arabian Gulf on a map, how does that make you feel?

ABBAS MILANI:  Well it makes me feel like it’s a beautiful body of water that has historically been called Persian Gulf and it is now a contested name.  That’s what it conjures to me.

WERMAN:  So I actually Googled the phrase Arabian Gulf and the very first result is a page that tells you the gulf you are looking for does not exist, try Persian Gulf and then it goes on the correct name is Persian Gulf which it always has been and will always remain Persian and if you typed Arabian Gulf, make sure you read some history books.  So clearly somebody has been Google bombing this.  It sounds like a big issue for ordinary Iranians, not just officials.

MILANI:  I think so.  I think what is in place here is three different kinds of nationalism.  It is a newly assertive Arab nationalism.  It is the Iranian Populist nationalism and it is the opportunistic nationalism of this regime that uses this selectively.  We have a picture of Ahmadinejad going to Saudi Arabia, sitting under a map that said Arabian Gulf.  It would have been impossible to imagine an Iranian diplomat in the [INDISCERNIBLE] regime to participate in such a meeting so they pick their fight when they find it politically profitable for them.

WERMAN:  Now the edict to the foreign airlines to change their in-flight map displays comes from Iran’s Transportation Minister, one Hamid Bevehani.  His political position apparently is pretty weak right now.  He’s been threatened with impeachment for incompetence.  Do you think this is a desperate move on his part to cling onto power?

MILANI:  I don’t think he would have the authority to do this without higher-ups wanting to pick this fight and I think it might well have come from his office for precisely the reason you suggest but I think it is the regime that is the leader and it’s the regime that is facing increasing opposition from the people that picks these kinds of fights.  If you go to the past 30 years, there is a long history of them doing, you know, what [INDISCERNIBLE] suggested 400 years ago.  Keep getting minds busy with foreign wars.

WERMAN:  So I guess for Americans to take an accurate pulse of Iranian domestic politics, watch how much they focus on the name of that Gulf, huh?

MILANI:  How much this regime does.  But the Iranian people have been insisting on it almost consistently.

WERMAN:  Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and author of the upcoming book on the Shah of Iran, entitled “The Peacock Prince.”  Thank you very much, indeed.

MILANI:  Thank you, my pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.