In a 1974 interview with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the US journalist Mike Wallace briefly referred to the dispute over the naming of what has been generally called “Sinus Persicus” (Persian Gulf) since ancient times – and what Wallace called “the Gulf”.
Pahlavi asked his interviewer: “Why do you call it ‘the Gulf’? You have been to school, haven’t you?” to which Wallace replied that he had. “What was the name that you read during your school days?” the shah asked. “The Persian Gulf,” Wallace admitted, adding: “But they call it the Arabian Gulf”. “‘They’ can do many things,” Pahlavi concluded – and considered the dispute settled.
This Iran-centric attitude towards the Persian Gulf explains much of Iran’s strategy in the Strait of Hormuz even today. Match this commonly held and historically formed mindset with the geopolitical reality. Iran has the longest shoreline in the Persian Gulf and it controls the entry to the strait via a string of heavily fortified islands. You would imagine that Tehran’s ability to close the strait should have been clear to the decision-makers in Tel Aviv and Washington.
