Whitaker picks up on some of clues from the State Department that I did when I wrote about this issue last week. He concludes that this is a policy change. It’s difficult to not see this the same way Whitaker does: “a rather petty gesture calculated to annoy Iran.”
]]>At an official level, the UN and various other international bodies recognise “Persian Gulf” as the established and recommended name – presumably based on historical usage. That is also the official position of the US. Or rather, it was until last week.
On 20 October, at a press briefing on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Andrew Shapiro, an assistant secretary at the state department, referred to “the Arabian Gulf and broader Middle East”.
On its own, this might be brushed off as a slip of the tongue, though Shapiro does seem to have been referring to a prepared statement. And since the phrase “broader Middle East” clearly includes the contentious stretch of water, why was it necessary to mention the Gulf (Persian or otherwise) at all?
Almost immediately, Shapiro’s use of “Arabian Gulf” stirred the National Iranian American Council into action, and in protest they organised a letter-writing campaign to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Their policy director, Jamal Abdi, also wrote an article about it for the Huffington Post, which appeared on Monday.
It’s difficult to imagine, therefore, that when Kurt Campbell – another assistant secretary at the state department – stepped into another press briefing on Tuesday he was totally unaware of the “Arabian Gulf” rumpus. But he then used the phrase himself, referring to “piracy issues in the Arabian Gulf”.
This is too much of a coincidence to be accidental; it suggests a change of policy. “Persian Gulf” has been the official American term since 1917 and in the absence of any explanation from the state department we can only speculate about why it has suddenly become Arabian. There’s no logical reason for it, except as a rather petty gesture calculated to annoy Iran.
At the press conference, the Persian Gulf, the widely accepted name for the body of water, was not mentioned at [...]]]>
At the press conference, the Persian Gulf, the widely accepted name for the body of water, was not mentioned at all. Iran itself was only mentioned once (the arms sale “is not solely about Iran,” Shapiro said).
I suspect that this was not simply a slip, as Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell used the phrase “Arabian Gulf” again today in his briefing to raise the curtains on Secretary Hillary Clinton’s upcoming trip to Asia.
The National Iranian American Council, writing before today’s briefing, said that Shapiro’s use of the term “Arabian Gulf” contradicts State Department policy and also could “fuel ethnic tensions.”
Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, wrote a blog post on the subject, and NIAC created a webpage with a form to send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton an e-mail demanding that State go back to using the term “Persian Gulf.”
“The term ‘Arabian Gulf’ first appeared fifty years ago as Pan-Arabism propaganda aimed at unifying Arabs against Iranians, Israelis, and other non-Arabs in the Middle East,” wrote Abdi at the Huffington Post, adding that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had both used the term to win over Arab populations by appealing to ethnic chauvinism.
The NIAC letter campaign page says that the name “Persian Gulf” has been widely accepted for more than two millennia.
Abdi wrote:
]]>While it may sound like a mere matter of semantics to some (though one could predict the diplomatic uproar if the US began referring to the “Gulf of America” along its Southern coast), in a region marred by ethnic tensions, usage of “Arabian Gulf” is a serious signal that could portend a dangerous, counterproductive path for the US ahead. [...]
The State Department’s sudden use of “Arabian Gulf” can only stoke tensions in the region. The move could foreshadow deterioration back to the mutual demonization that characterized much of the previous Administration’s Iran approach. President Obama successfully reigned in much of that counterproductive rhetoric and, while there has been little reciprocation from Tehran, managed to earn back significant credibility necessary for US leadership on the global stage. But by flying in the face of protocol and using the term “Arabian Gulf”, the State Department risks backsliding to a posture in which the US once again bargains away its moral authority in exchange for caustic, emotionally satisfying insults.
Such an ethnically divisive term sends the wrong message, particularly coming just weeks ahead of planned talks with Iran.