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Friday
August 24, 2001

British support of the Arabs

I saw your rebuke of the Israeli diplomat ["Shame on you"]. I wrote below a while ago and have provided some examples of the British support of the Arabs.

Regards,

Rostam

A friend who lives in the UK recently sent me an e-mail saying that he recently purchased a globe recently from W H Smith, which is a large chain of stationary stores, for his son's school project had Arabian Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. We were aware that the English unlike the Americans (you have to give credit where it,s due) or the United Nations had not resisted the name change in their commercial circles but this was the first time we observed a cartographic source using Arabian Gulf. It did not really surprise me since the British have always used any chance to divide and rule. One such tactic had been to encourage the Arab countries of the Gulf to take up the call of Arab Nationalism and support the term Arabian Gulf. But I must say that we Iranians, particularly the Iranian-Americans, do not help our cause. As someone who has spent most of his adult life in the West, we Iranians have succeeded in confusing everyone about our identity and culture, ourselves included. We Iranians have diluted our identity by overeducating foreigners. We are so eager to defend the Iranian image outside we have created confusion about the name of the country, the name of our people, the name of our seas and the name of our language. Typical questions asked by western friends are: Is the country Iran or Persia? Are we Persians or Iranians? Farsi or Persian? And because of the questions we have created we are not helping the fight to keep the Persian Gulf, Persian.

The English name for our language is Persian. Yet because of our blind patriotism or lack of unity, we have confused the people in the West by imposing the word Farsi which in reality is not even Persian but the Arabic name for our language. If we want to insist on educating westerners then we should seek a change to the proper Persian name for our language which is Parsi.. As others have pointed out when conversing in English we do not as someone if they speak "Deutsch when we are enquiring whether they speak German. The point may be trivial but read on.

When our forefathers in 1930's asked the westerners to change the country name from Persian to Iran, they were so eager to escape the colonial powers' influence and establish the Iranians' rights over their own affairs that they did not think about the consequences. One consequence is that because of the phonetic inadequacies of the English Alphabet Iran and Iraq sounds the same. This may seem insignificant. However it has made it very easy for average westerner who is very provincial and has very little knowledge outside his small sphere to consider Iran as part of the Arab world. Another seemingly trivial point but it contributes to the dilution of our identity. By calling the country Iran, we broke the link between the country name and Persian Gulf. The Brits cleverly refused to accept Iranian Gulf and it provided them with the perfect divide and rule tactic between the Arabs and us. They then sucked up to the Arabs by supporting the Arab nationalist calls to change the name of the Gulf (It was Nasser the Egyption leader who dreamt of Arab unity and ruling the Arabs who first came up with the idea in the fifties).

After the 1979 revolution, in their eagerness to take the lead in the Moslem world, the Islamic Republic forgot the basic historical fact that Iranians chose the Shia religion as means of unification in order to preserve their own culture and resist the Arab rule. The Islamic Republic government did not defend the Iranians rights and was happier to compete for leadership of the Islamic world by trying to be more Arab than the Arabs till it was rudely and disastrously awakened by the Iraq's war on Iran when its friends in the Arab world switched their support to their Arab brother. By then it was too late.

The Arab countries around the Persian Gulf intensified their efforts by putting intense commercial pressure on western companies. You only need to look at the language used in the Oil industry and its derivative or ancillary industries such as Shipping and Reporting Services. Most of the international oil companies and tanker brokers had to use the term Arabian Gulf and would not dare use the historical name Persian Gulf, for instance see the relevant Internet sites for shipbrokers. Same applies to trade journals in the oil industry (look at the Internet sites for McGraw Hill's Platts or Petroleum Argus or Reuters). Olympic Airlines is now using Arabian Gulf in all its literature. The use of this term is spilling into less specialist areas and general use. Action by Iranians in exile and late action by the Islamic Republic,s representatives The use of this term is spilling into less specialist areas and general use. Action by Iranians in exile and the Islamic Republic representatives has now caused some commercial organizations to drop the term Arabian Gulf but feeling as pigs in the middle they have invented the term Middle East Gulf!

It is unlikely that we Iranians can get agreement about this issue as we are often incapable of reaching consensus or organizing ourselves effectively. Yet every one of us is proud of our history and is aware of our constant struggle against the Arab influence. Please beware that our blind patriotism on one side our ignorance of history on the other, are directly leading to a dilution of our identity. It does not do us any harm to leave the English name for our language as Persian and its equivalent in German, French etc. in order to keep the link with our past and heritage in world languages.

A friend who lives in the UK recently sent me an e-mail saying that he recently purchased a globe recently from W H Smith, which is a large chain of stationary stores, for his son's school project had Arabian Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. We were aware that the English unlike the Americans (you have to give credit where it,s due) or the United Nations had not resisted the name change in their commercial circles but this was the first time we observed a cartographic source using Arabian Gulf. It did not really surprise me since the British have always used any chance to divide and rule. One such tactic had been to encourage the Arab countries of the Gulf to take up the call of Arab Nationalism and support the term Arabian Gulf. But I must say that we Iranians, particularly the Iranian-Americans, do not help our cause. As someone who has spent most of his adult life in the West, we Iranians have succeeded in confusing everyone about our identity and culture, ourselves included. We Iranians have diluted our identity by overeducating foreigners. We are so eager to defend the Iranian image outside we have created confusion about the name of the country, the name of our people, the name of our seas and the name of our language. Typical questions asked by western friends are: Is the country Iran or Persia? Are we Persians or Iranians? Farsi or Persian? And because of the questions we have created we are not helping the fight to keep the Persian Gulf, Persian.

The English name for our language is Persian. Yet because of our blind patriotism or lack of unity, we have confused the people in the West by imposing the word Farsi which in reality is not even Persian but the Arabic name for our language. If we want to insist on educating westerners then we should seek a change to the proper Persian name for our language which is Parsi.. As others have pointed out when conversing in English we do not as someone if they speak "Deutsch" when we are enquiring whether they speak German. The point may be trivial but read on.

When our forefathers in 1930's asked the westerners to change the country name from Persian to Iran, they were so eager to escape the colonial powers' influence and establish the Iranians' rights over their own affairs that they did not think about the consequences. One consequence is that because of the phonetic inadequacies of the English Alphabet Iran and Iraq sounds the same. This may seem insignificant. However it has made it very easy for average westerner who is very provincial and has very little knowledge outside his small sphere to consider Iran as part of the Arab world. Another seemingly trivial point but it contributes to the dilution of our identity. By calling the country Iran, we broke the link between the country name and Persian Gulf. The Brits cleverly refused to accept Iranian Gulf and it provided them with the perfect divide and rule tactic between the Arabs and us.

After the 1979 revolution, the Arab countries around the Persian Gulf intensified their efforts by putting intense commercial pressure on western companies. You only need to look at the language used in the Oil industry and its derivative or ancillary industries such as Shipping and Reporting Services. Most of the international oil companies and tanker brokers had to use the term Arabian Gulf and would not dare use the historical name Persian Gulf, for instance see the relevant Internet sites for shipbrokers. Same applies to trade journals in the oil industry (look at the Internet sites for McGraw Hill's Platts or Petroleum Argus, Reuters or ICIC London Oil Report who is particularly persistent in using the term Arabian Gulf). Olympic Airlines is now using Arabian Gulf in all its literature. The use of this term is spilling into less specialist areas and general use. Action by Iranians in exile and the Islamic Republic representatives has now caused some commercial organizations to drop the term Arabian Gulf but feeling as pigs in the middle they have invented the term Middle East Gulf!

It is unlikely that Iranians can get agreement about this issue as we are often incapable of reaching consensus or organizing ourselves effectively. Yet every one of us is proud of our history and is aware of our constant struggle against the Arab influence. Please beware that our blind patriotism on one side our ignorance of history on the other, are directly leading to a dilution of our identity. It does not do us any harm to leave the English name for our language as Persian and its equivalent in German, French etc. in order to keep the link with our past and heritage in world languages.

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