WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will make a decision about how the U.S. government will refer to the body of water now commonly known as the Persian Gulf when he visits Arab states next week.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he expects his hosts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will ask him about the U.S. officially calling the waterway the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia.
“They’re going to ask me about that when I get there, and I’ll have to make a decision,” Trump said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said Trump would announce the change while he was on the trip. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
That report generated a storm of outcry from Iranians of all political persuasions who said the Persian Gulf moniker was thousands of years old and an essential part of Iran’s cultural and geographical history.
It comes months after Trump said the U.S. would refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
“I have a case right over here. It’s called Gulf of America,” Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office. “And I guess a lot of people get ideas from us.”
Arab nations have long pushed for a change to the geographic name of the body of water off the southern coast of Iran, while Iran has maintained its historic ties to the gulf.
Iranians both supportive and opposed to Iran’s current government denounced any change.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has been involved in three rounds of nuclear negotiations with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, said the change would indicate “hostile intent” toward Iran.
“Politically motivated attempts to alter the historically established name of the Persian Gulf are indicative of hostile intent toward Iran and its people, and are firmly condemned,” he wrote on the social platform X. “Any short-sighted step in this connection will have no validity or legal or geographical effect, it will only bring the wrath of all Iranians from all walks of life and political persuasion in Iran, the U.S. and across the world.”
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran who was deposed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is a staunch opponent of the current government, also decried the step.
“The Persian Gulf is not just a name but a historical reality,” he said in a social media post. “The reported decision by President Trump to abrogate history, should it be true, is an affront to the people of Iran and our great civilization.”
The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf of Arabia” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps.
On Google Maps in the U.S., the body of water appears as Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf). Apple Maps only says the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. military for years has used the Arabian Gulf in statements and images it releases.
Trump can change the name for official U.S. purposes, but he can’t dictate what the rest of the world calls it.
The Associated Press sued the Trump administration earlier this year after the White House barred its journalists from covering most events because of the organization’s decision not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” within the United States
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
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