Iraq's Parliament Speaker Haibat Al Halbousi has entered a public argument with his Iranian counterpart, centring on the decades-old dispute over the name of the body of water between Iran and the Arab Gulf states.
A day after they met in Baghdad, Mr Al Halbousi and Iran's Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf were on opposite sides of an argument on X.
Mr Ghalibaf had on Wednesday evening posted an image of himself in front of a map of the region, which used the Iranian term for the Gulf. The post had no other words aside from “Persian Gulf”, and was interpreted as Mr Ghalibaf’s way of showing Iran’s intention to impose hegemony on the region.
On Thursday, Iraq's Mr Al Halbousi responded with a virtually identical mocked-up image that used the name “Arabian Gulf”.
The exchange drew immediate attention online in Iraq and beyond, highlighting how a symbolic issue continues to inflame sensitivities between Iran and several Arab countries.
The term Arabian Gulf was adopted by Arab states in the 1960s and has been widely used since. Arab countries have a combined coastline on the Arabian Gulf of over 3,500km, while Iran has approximately 1,200km of coastline along it. Control of the sea and its shipping lanes has become particularly sensitive during the present US-Iran war.
The Iraqi and Iranian parliament speakers addressed the issue at their meeting, as Mr Al Halbousi requested a “special status” for Iraq to allow oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.
The naming issue resurfaces regularly in diplomacy, sports, and media. For Iraq, which shares coastlines with both Iran and Gulf Arab states, officials have often tried to avoid the controversy in formal settings to maintain balance.
Pro-Iran Iraqi users took the side of Mr Ghalibaf, arguing the Iranian name was well established. A prominent account in Iraq called Basra Today said: “Behind the controversy around the name of the Gulf, what is striking is Iran's clear sensitivity to the word 'Arab'”. It added that Iran had previously changed the name of some localities to remove the word Arab.
The exchange between the parliamentarians shows that even as Baghdad pursues economic and security co-operation with Tehran, symbolic issues like the Gulf’s name remain a flashpoint in public diplomacy.
The US President Donald Trump has provoked Iranian anger in the past by referring to the Arabian Gulf. His use of the term was welcomed by several Gulf Arab states and criticised by Tehran, which called it a distortion of history. Previous US administrations have also used the term.
In a previous naming dispute with Iraq in 2023, Iran summoned the Iraqi ambassador to protest against prime minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani's use of the term Arabian Gulf to describe a football tournament taking place in Basra.
Iraq is subject to both Iranian and American influence. At the Baghdad meeting, Mr Al Halbousi had cited the “nature of the relationship” between Iraq and Iran when seeking special permission to export oil.
But Iraq's government is also eager to curb the influence of pro-Iran militias operating on its soil, which had contributed to Iraq being dragged into the regional war. Armed factions have been given a September 30 deadline to disarm.
