Persian Gulf Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf (), 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
Arab states of the Persian Gulf used to refer to the inhabitants of Eastern Arabia. Historically, "Khaleeji" meant descendants of Ichthyophagi, the coast-dwelling "fish eaters". Geographically, the Arabic-speaking is solely Eastern Arabia. Press in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have varying degrees of freedom with Kuwait topping the league with a lively press that enjoys considerably more freedom than its Persian Gulf counterparts according to Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. Both organizations rank Kuwait's press as the most free of all Arab states of the Persian Gulf and, in fact, rank amongst the top three most free press in the Arab world. Qatar