Mehdi Sanaei made the comments in an Op-Ed run by Iranian online news outlet Entekhab.
According to Sanaei, the name “Persian Gulf” in Russia’s political and media literature has been so accepted that the strategic waterway bore the same name in the country’s collective security document for the region in 2018 which partly addressed Iran’s Arab neighbors.
Sanaei added that during those years, no joint statement was ever issued by the UAE or other Arab countries, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other hand, regarding the three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.
The former Iranian envoy to Russia said despite that some reports claimed there was a similar statement in 2007, what just happened is a new development that must be analyzed.
Sanaei stressed that he never saw any Russian official use the fake name “Arabic Gulf”.
He said he only saw the Russian Arab speaking news channel Russiya al-Yaum (Russia Today) use it a couple of times, but he realized later that this happened under the influence of Arab staff of the channel.
