Persian Gulf



"The Persian Gulf is now under attack once again. Can't believe that would've happened. Now these Iranian bastards are trying to destroy Saudi Arabia, and bring the end of the powerful rule of the House of Saud here in most of the Arabian Peninsula once and for all."

--Su Ji-Hoon, Another Persian Gulf War

The Persian Gulf (Persian: خلیج فارس‎, translit. Xalij-e Fârs, lit. 'Gulf of Fars') is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean (Gulf of Oman) through the Strait of Hormuz and lies between Iran to the northeast and the Arabian Peninsula to the southwest. The Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline.

The Persian Gulf was a battlefield of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers. It is the namesake of the 1991 Gulf War, the largely air- and land-based conflict that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

The gulf has many fishing grounds, extensive reefs (mostly rocky, but also coral), and abundant pearl oysters, but its ecology has been damaged by industrialization and oil spills.

The body of water is historically and internationally known as the "Persian Gulf." Some Arab governments refer to it as the "Arabian Gulf" (Arabic: الخليج العربي‎) or "The Gulf," but neither term is recognized internationally. The name "Gulf of Iran (Persian Gulf)" is used by the International Hydrographic Organization.

The Persian Gulf is geologically very young, having been formed around 15,000 years ago.

Geography
This inland sea of some 251,000 square kilometers (96,912 square miles) is connected to the Gulf of Oman in the east by the Strait of Hormuz; and its western end is marked by the major river delta of the Shatt al-Arab, which carries the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Its length is 989 kilometers (615 miles), with Iran covering most of the northern coast and Saudi Arabia most of the southern coast. The Persian Gulf is about 56 km (35 mi) wide at its narrowest, in the Strait of Hormuz. The waters are overall very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 meters (295 feet) and an average depth of 50 meters (164 feet). Countries with a coastline on the Persian Gulf are (clockwise, from the north): Iran; Oman's exclave Musandam; the United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia (in Iran this is called "Arvand-Rood," where "Rood" means "river"); Qatar, on a peninsula off the Saudi coast; Bahrain, on an island; Kuwait; and Iraq in the northwest. Various small islands also lie within the Persian Gulf, some of which are the subject of territorial disputes between the states of the region.