Iran’s enthusiastic guardianship of its sovereignty appears to have extended to international air travel.
From now on, the Iranian government has announced, any airline which refers to the waterway between Iran and Arab states as the Arabian Gulf rather than the Persian Gulf will be banned from its airspace.
“The airlines of the southern Persian Gulf countries flying to Iran are warned to use the term Persian Gulf on their electronic display boards,” the country’s transport minister, Hamid Behbahani, told the Daily Iran newspaper.
“Otherwise they will be banned from Iranian airspace for a month the first time and upon repetition their aircraft will be grounded in Iran and flight permits to Iran will be revoked.”
Although the warning seems to be aimed at airlines based in neighbouring countries, the newspaper reported that Iran has also punished a foreign employee of one of its own airlines for making the same mistake.
It said that a Greek employee of Iranian commercial carrier Kish Air had been fired for using the term Arabian Gulf on a display board, and the airline had been asked to apologise over the incident.
Last month the Saudi-based Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation said it had made the decision to scrap the Islamic Solidarity Games which were to be held in Iran in April because of a dispute over whether the Gulf waterway is Arab or Persian.
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