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Iran slams South Korea for misnaming Persian Gulf

January 23, 2020 at 3:49 pm

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi on 11 November 2019 [Wikipedia]

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi yesterday criticised South Korea for plans to send military forces to the region, as well as for misnaming the Persian Gulf as the “Arab-Persian Gulf”.

According to Iranian news outlets, Mousavi tweeted: “Based on which knowledge and justification is South Korea seeking to dispatch military forces to the region when its Defence Ministry does not even know the historic name of the Persian Gulf?”

He added: “Mutual respect and acceptance of realities are the basis of relations between civilized nations.”

This came after a few hours after Seoul’s announcement that it would expand the operational area of its anti-piracy unit from the Gulf of Aden to the “Gulf of Oman and the Arab-Persian Gulf.”

Iran: the eternal geopolitical empire

South Korea stressed that the expansion of the mission of its forces is absolutely not part of the US coalition in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has been fighting on several fronts to maintain the historic name of this area as the Persian Gulf.

This fight followed an attempt by some Arab nations to rename it as the Arabian Gulf following Arab perceptions that Iran supported Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.