Established in 1998, the Persian Gulf Organization (PGO) is a group of volunteers dedicated to the defense and preservation of the Persian Gulf heritage.

In recent years, this ancient name, testifying to the legacy of Iran (with over 2,500 years of documented history), has come under
attack. Those most eager to affect a name change are ultra-nationalist Arab chauvinists who seek to capitalize on Iran’s perceived weakness. These historical revisionists have taken their ethnic pride to outrageous extremes by suggesting that the Persian Gulf should be called by various fake terms .

Unfortunately, there are those opportunists outside the Arab world,
primarily in Britain and other Western European nations, who have given credence to these false claims and reprehensible attempts at historical distortion by referring to the Persian Gulf as merely, “the Gulf.” (The BBC World Service, Reuters and  AFP are especially culpable). By doing so, they apparently hope to curry favor with the Arabs and to win more lucrative oil concessions for their oil industries and to attract further Arab investment in other
sectors of their depressed economies.

We of the Persian Gulf Online Organization have viewed these developments with alarm, especially as this abuse continues to gain momentum. In the absence of decisive action by the Iranian government, it is up to us to defend the heritage of the Persian Gulf region.

We realize that our mission is more than the preservation of a name. We are dedicated to the defense of the truth and to insure that historical contributions to world civilization are not deprecated.

We emphatically state that historical identity of the Persian Gulf has been documented for thousands of years in Western, Persian (Iranian), and Arab sources. Even religious sources support
this – for example, in the Hadith, the Persian Gulf is called the Persian Sea (bahr al-fars).

The Persian Gulf Online Organization must continue to be vigilant in its defense of historical legacy. It is morally wrong to distort and minimize historical fact and we are committed to defending the truth. We urge all who are interested in Persian Gulf studies to join us in this noble undertaking. Please visit www.persiangulfonline.org for further information.

The PGO is a non-partisan and non-religious organization, which has no ties to any government or political party. It does not support any political individual or ideology.

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(Tags: Golfe Persique, Golfo Persico, Persischen Golf, الخلیج الفارسی خلیج پارس, 波斯湾 )