Letter to Shell in the Middle East

August 17, 2004

From: Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh [mailto:pirouzmojtahedzadeh@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004
To: Dave.Stuart@shell.com
Shell in the Middle East

Dear Mr. Stuart

Thank you very much for your reply to my earlier message about the use of the ambiguous term "The Gulf" in the latest Shell magazine, but I am afraid your explanation cannot be appreciated because the so-called impartial term only satisfies one side, the side that has decided for the reasons of racial hatred of the Iranians, to change the name of the Persian Gulf. But what I think would be of greater interest to you is the fact that the "a lot of people on the other side" is limited to the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Qatar (the old admirers of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime) and some people who support them for benefiting from them financially and economically.
Other Arabs do not share Abu Dhabi and Doha's fanaticism in this respect and I
can produce large quantities of documents from Arab academia and Arab press
that intellectuals and fair minded journalists even encourage the Arabs to
return to the days of sanity in naming the Persian Gulf (Al-Anbaa daily of
Kuwait, October 2003, for example).

Best Wishes
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh

From: "Stuart, Dave SEPI-EPM-S-EA" <Dave.Stuart@shell.com>
To: <pirouzmojtahedzadeh@hotmail.com>
CC: "Weener, Robert W SEBV" <r.weener@siol.ae>
Subject: RE: 'Shell in the MIddle East'
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:11:33 +0400

Dear Mr Mojtahed-Zadeh,

On behalf of Robert Weener, Country Chairman for Shell in Iran and
General Manager of Shell Iran Offshore Limited (SIOL), I am replying to your
email regarding the article in the last issue of 'Shell in the Middle East'
magazine on preparations to start up operations for the production of
oil in the Soroosh and Nowrooz offshore oil fields.

I can understand your concern over the use of the word 'Gulf' for the
location of the facilities. We would not dispute your contention that
the name of this particular body of water is the 'Persian Gulf' but would
point out that we need to be sensitive to the fact that there are similarly a
lot of people who refer to the 'Arabian Gulf'.
Shell, of course, has stakeholders, contacts and many friends on both
sides of the divide and when the magazine was first launched, more than six
years ago, it was decided at a very high level that to avoid causing offence
or embarrassment to either our Iranian or Arab readers, to just use the
word 'Gulf'.

'Shell in the Middle East' has been consistent in this approach ever
since and I trust that you can understand our position.
I hope that you will continue to enjoy receiving and reading 'Shell in
the Middle East' in the future.

Dave Stuart
Managing Editor
'Shell in the Middle East'

>-----Original Message-----
From: Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh [mailto:pirouzmojtahedzadeh@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 4:03 PM
To: robert.weener@shell.co.ir
Subject: Persian Gulf

Dear Mr. Robert Winner
Shell Offshore Iran Limited

I am amazed at seeing the name of the Persian Gulf being deformed in your article in the ambiguous shape of "The Gulf". I strongly protest at any attempt in interfering in the historical names of geographical places for the sake of becoming impartial in some Arab racists' attempt in changing the name of the Persian Gulf and the facts of history. Recently the Guardian of London used the same ambiguous term "The Gulf" instead of the Persian Gulf and that has caused an explanation in reply to their naive excuses. I repeat here for your attention the text of my last letter to them which is self explanatory.

Best Wishes
Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
_______________________________________

Dear Mr. Marsh

First of all I would like to apologize for taking such a long time to respond to your last message; I needed sometime to compile a more in-depth response that would deal with the more serious aspect of the points you raised in your notes to me. Secondly, I must confess that I found the explanations from you as the editor of the Guardian, truly amazing. It is not clear on what basis you argue that: "there is no single undisputed "correct" name for these places. The French call it La Manche, the English have traditionally called it the English Channel which reflects the English view of things - we have decided on the Channel as the most accurate, most neutral style but we are not claiming it is the only "proper and historically accurate" name. The answer to this argument is:

1- Firstly we must be aware of the fact that there is an organization inthe United Nations called "UNEGN" the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names, who annually publicize unification of many geographical names and they have on several occasions announced that the "Persian Gulf" is the single undisputed correct name for the body of water separating the Iranian Plateau from the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, we should know that the office of the Secretary General of the United Nations has on several occasions announced that the correct name for the body of water separating the Iranian Plateau from the Arabian Peninsula is the "Persian Gulf". To be certain of this, suffice for Mr. Marsh to see UN Secretariat letter of 5 March 1971 (UN AD311/1GEN) to the Iranian permanent mission; UN Secretariat's editorial directive of 10 August 1984 (UN LA45.82 C), and UN Secretariat' editorial directive of 10 January 1990 (ST/CS/SER.A/29).

2- The conclusion that there is no single undisputed "correct" name for
geographical places because of disagreement on the names of the Persian
Gulf and the English Channel is a hasty conclusion. Apart from these two
instances, thousands of other geographical places in the world have
single undisputed "correct" names.

3- It is absolutely wrong of Mr. Marsh to suggest that because some Arab
racists decided to fabricate an Arabized name for the Persian Gulf the
British media would be justified to use the ambiguous term 'The Gulf'
and claim that it is a neutral term and not ambiguous. If that is the case,
then I wonder if the Pakistanis decided to change the name of the Indian
Ocean into Pakistani Ocean for political reasons and/or if the Iranians
decided to change the name of Shatt al-Arab into Shatt al-Iran in
retaliation the Arab attempt in changing the name of the Persian Gulf,
would Mr. Marsh decide to adopt the term "The Ocean" instead of Indian
Ocean, and "The Shatt" instead of Shatt al-Arab for the sake of
neutrality? Similarly, if using the term "The Gulf" instead of the
Persian Gulf would not cause ambiguity one wonders what would be the
position when the Americans decide to change the name of the Gulf of
Mexico into the "Gulf of Florida"? Would he use the term "The Gulf" in
that context as well, and when the Iranians decide to change the name of
the Gulf of Oman into the "Gulf of Iran" would Mr. Marsh use the term
"The Gulf" instead of Gulf of Oman for the sake of neutrality? The same
goes for such names as the "China Sea", the "Irish Sea", the "Indian
Ocean", and the "Suez Canal", etc.

It might be interesting to Mr. Marsh to note that when in one of the
conferences of the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names in 1970s
Israel tried to change the name of the Gulf of Aghaba into the Gulf of
Ilyat, the 22 Arab representatives revolted against the effort and
described it as a racially motivated design representing lack of respect
for history and geography.

4- The reason for British media adopting the ambiguous name "The Gulf"
for the "Persian Gulf" is exactly what Professor Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
pointed out in his letter of 18 December 1998 to Right Honourable Toney
Blare on the same subject where he says:
Your Excellency, may I ask most humbly, while arguing that your
Government's military undertaking against Iraq is to enforce the will of
the United Nations in a highly costly operation, would it be too
presumptuous on my part to assume that it is not compatible with the
dignity of your office to shy away from the principle of using correct
geographical names, specially when their authenticity has been confirmed
by the same United nations.

Some British politicians and journalists began as from 1970s to use the
term "The Gulf", in order not to offend nationalistic and racially
motivated fancies of those of their Arab business partners who happened to be
affected by massive propaganda campaign of ultra-nationalists like
Saddam Hussein in the Arab World for changing the historical name of
that sea.... (Pirouz Mojtahed-zadeh, "Letter from Iran", collected by
Morteza Ghorchi, Ataei Publications, Tehran 2003, p. 41-2, text in
English and Persian).

5- It is absolutely wrong of Mr. Marsh to assume that variation in
naming the English Channel is because of the same reason as some Arabs
have started to call the Persian Gulf with a fabricated name. While the two
versions of "La Manche" and "English Channel" are incidental and emerged
and evolved innocently in separate ways, the term "Arabian Gulf" was
fabricated first in 1958 by Abdul-Karim Qassem of Iraq's first Baath
regime for anti-Persian reasons, and then repeated in 1962 by Abd
an-Nasser of Egypt who grabbed the idea and at the climax of his Arab
nationalism referred to the Persian Gulf as Arabian Gulf. Ironically, he
seems to have forgotten that in his introduction to the book Ad-Da'wat
al-Kubra let-Tahrir (Great invitation for freedom) (1955) he had described the Arab World as the lands Mina al- Mohit al-Atlasi ela al-Khalij al-Faresi (from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf). Nasser, in reality wanted to grab the so-called
winning card of name change from his Iraqi rivals in the contest for
Arab leadership. Yet again, Nasser's call for the change of the name of
the Persian Gulf did not have the intended impact on the Arab World and
we have so many thousands of documents proving this. With the return of Baath regime into power in Iraq in 1968 under the leadership of Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein, Iraq once again became the center of conspiracy for the change of this name.

These efforts intensified as Baghdad began to implement the strategy of
turning Iran into a common enemy of the Arabs in order to gain the upper
hand in its rivalry with other Arab contenders like Egypt. Iraq, under
Saddam Hussein, invested much energy, time, and finance to promote this
fabricated name. Many seminars were organized, books were published, and
much money was spent to pay reporters and politicians in the West to
adopt the changed name. These activities successfully spread anti-Iranian
feelings among some Arabs, especially in the region and individuals in
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and even the ruling families of Qatar and Abu-
Dhabi joined the bandwagon of campaigning for the change of the name of
Persian Gulf.

Other Arabs, especially in media and among scholars and academics
rejected the conspiracy and argued, somewhat in vein hoping to attract attentions
to the danger of such racially motivated practices. The first example of
this was Qadri Quljei's article in daily Ar-Rased of Beirut in November 1968,and the latest example was the article by the editor of Al-Anbaa daily of Kuwait, which in October 2003 suggested that the Arabs should compensatefor their wrongdoing in changing the name of the Persian Gulf and should go back to using this name in its original form.

6- Mr. Marsh is absolutely wrong where he says: We try to keep our
terminology as neutral as possible, and "Persian Gulf" is not
neutral...He does not explain as to why use of the historical name "Persian Gulf"
used harmoniously by all nations including the Arabs for hundreds of years,
now is not neutral. He refers to some imaginary problems such as use of the
correct name would give the impression of the ownership of the all areas
of that sea, disregarding the fact that the country the ownership of all
areas of the Persian Gulf might be attributed to is not "Persia", it is called
"Iran" and the term 'Persian Gulf' cannot imply ownership of all places
of the Persian Gulf to "Iran". This unbelievable fallacy which resemble
very closely the argument of some Arabs, to them only applies to the body of
water and to them, use of the terms Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, Irish
Sea, Gulf of Mexico do not imply ownership of all places in those gulfs and
seas and oceans, why? Well because they say so. Mr. Marsh says: Oceans and
seas are a rather different matter, so we are obliged to talk about the
"Irish Sea" and the "Indian Ocean", even though they are not strictly Irish or
Indian. Again he fails to explain why the case of Indian Ocean and Irish

Sea is different. To him, they are just different because he says so.

7- Somewhere in his explanations Mr. Marsh speaks of the necessity of
being thorough historically in these matters and not relying on hearsay.
He is absolutely correct and he is invited to prows the following
selection of captions on the historical background of the name Persian Gulf:
The name Persian Gulf is as ancient as it can be. While geographical
Concept of the ancient Persians of the waters of the world was that from
the great ocean surrounding the lands two seas branched towards the
center of the earth: one to the west (today's Mediterranean Sea) and one
to the east that they called Parsa Draya (the Persian Sea)
(Mojtahed-Zadeh, Khalij-e Fars, The Persian Gulf, Ataei Publication,
Tehran 2000-46), the ancient Greeks believed that from the great ocean
surrounding the lands four seas branched towards the center of the
earth, and they were: the Persian Gulf (Sinus Persicus), the Arabian
Gulf (today's Red Sea), the Caspian Sea, and Mediterranean Sea. See all ancient Greek books of history and geography like those of Talis of Mellitus, Hecatus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Anaximender, Eratosthenes, Cosmas Indicopleutes, (for the last one see: Ellsworth's Living Geography, How countries differ, Macmillan publication, New York, 1936). The reason for naming this sea was that it was situated inside the realms of Persia (see Arab historian/geographer Ibn Huqal an-Nasibi, Surat al-Arth, London 1938-244). This was a geographical reality from the
earliest times up until very recent (first half of the 20th century)
when the British succeeded in creating a number of Arab emirates on the
southern coasts out of the autonomous tribes of veining Iranian
federation whose dependency on Iran had all became obscure but for a
vague Persian-Omani sense of sovereignty in those parts of the sea (see
Egyptian thinker, Mohammad Nufel in interview with the daily Kayhan of
Tehran, Wednesday 4th Ordibehesht 1349 (1970).

While the Greek notion of Sinus Persicus or Persian Gulf remained in use
in Greece with some influence in the subsequent civilizations of Western
hemisphere, the use of the Achaemenian notion of Persian Sea became
universal. It was first adopted by the Romans in the form of Mare
Persicum, and then by the Arabs in the form of Al-Bahr al- Faresi. It was on the
basis of Persian geographical notion of two seas branching out of great
global ocean towards the center of the earth that Darius commissioned
Greek seafarer Sakulas to survey and chart maritime routes from Persia to
India even onto Egypt and it was as a result of this that he ordered
construction of the canal between the then Persian Sea branch that is known today as Red Sea, and the Sea on the West (Mediterranean Sea). He also connected east and west of the civilized world of the time by inventing road (the Royal
Road) and communication (chapar) system.

Arab historian/geographers of early Islamic era extensively embraced the
Persian notion of the world's internal seas as being two: The Persian
Sea (Al Bahr al-Faresi) and Mediterranean Sea (Al Bahr al-Motawaset). This
geography of the waters of the world even gets mentioned in the holy
Quran where it speaks of flowing two seas to get close to each other....
(Surat ar-Rahman, verses 20 to 22).

Arab and Islamic Historian/geographers like Ibn al-Faqih (279 AH),
Shahab ed-Din An-Naviri, Sohrab of the same era, Tabari, Yaqubi, Abi Zeid
Balkhi (321 AH), Estakhri (346 AH), Ibn Huqal Baghdadi (367 AH), Maqdasi (375
AH), Biruni (440 AH), Masudi, Sharif al-Edrisi (560 AH), Yaqut Hamavi (626
AH), Qazvini (682 AH), Ad-Dameshqi (727 AH), Hamdollah Mostowfi (740 AH), Ibn
al-Wardi (749 AH), Al-Qalqashandi (821 AH) worked extensively in
studying geographical details of the Persian Sea extending from China to Persia
and Egypt. This went on until 19th century when gradually new names like
China Sea, Indian Ocean, Arab Sea, Red Sea, and Gulf of Oman replaced the
ancient Persian Sea, while ancient Greek notion of Persian Gulf (Sinus Persicus)
remained for the body of water separating Iran from Arabia. Famous Arab
historian of 20th century, Georgi Zeidan says of this in (page 43 of
Vol. II of) his famous Tarikh at-Tamaddon al-Eslami (the history of Islamic
civilization) that: Persian Sea - and by it, they meant all seas
surrounding the Arab lands, from the confluence of the water of Tigris
in Iraq onto Ilah (on the Red Sea) and included in it were what we know
today as the Persian Gulf, Arab Sea, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, and Gulf of
Aghaba. In the 1930s Sir Charles Belgrave, British adviser to the Emir of
Bahrain and H.B.M. Political Resident in the Persian Gulf put together a dossier
suggesting change of the name Persian Gulf into "Arabian Gulf" for the
sake of British protectorate emirates being Arabic. British and Arab
governments ignored this suggestion because of its obvious drive for the
de-Persianization of the region. In 1958, Colonel Abdul-Karim Qassem
came into power in Iraq in the wake of a bloody quo d' etat and almost
immediately began to campaign for the leadership of the Arab world by
staring up Arab nationalism and opened Belgrave's dossier of changing
the name of the Persian Gulf. Though his call for Arab unity and ultra Arab
nationalism did not win over Arab opinion very much, Abd an-Nasser of
Egypt grabbed the idea and at the climax of his Arab nationalism in 1962
referred to the Persian Gulf as Arabian Gulf. Ironically, he seems to have
forgotten that in his introduction to the book Ad-Da'wat al-Kubra let-Tahrir
(Great invitation for freedom) (1955) he had described the Arab World as the
lands Mina al- Mohit al-Atlasi ela al-Khalij al-Faresi (from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Persian Gulf). Nasser, in reality wanted to grab the so-called
winning card of name change from his Iraqi rivals in the contest for
Arab leadership. Yet again, Nasser's call for the change of the name of the
Persian Gulf did not have the intended impact on the Arab World and we
have so many thousands of documents proving this.

With the return of Baath regime into power in Iraq in 1968 under the
leadership of Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein, Iraq once again
became the center of conspiracy for the change of this name. These
efforts intensified as Baghdad began to implement the strategy of turning Iran
into a common enemy of the Arabs in order to gain the upper hand in its
rivalry with other Arab contenders like Egypt. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein,
invested much energy, time, and finance promoting this change of name. Many
seminars were organized, books were published, and much money was spent to pay reporters and politicians in the West to adopt the changed name. These
activities successfully spread anti-Iranian feelings among some Arabs,
especially in the region and individuals in Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab
Emirates, and even in Saudi Arabia joined the bandwagon of campaigning
for the change of the name of Persian Gulf. Other Arabs, especially in media

and among scholars and academics rejected the conspiracy and argued,
somewhat in vein hoping to attract attentions to the danger of such
racially motivated practices. The first example of this was Qadri
Quljei's article in daily Ar-Rased of Beirut in November 1968, and the
latest example was the article by the editor of Al-Anbaa daily of
Kuwait, which in October 2003 suggested that the Arabs should compensate
for their wrongdoing in changing the name of the Persian Gulf and should
go back to using this name in its original form.