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The Persian Gulf , is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean 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 fishing grounds, extensive reefs , and abundant pearl oysters, but its ecology has been damaged by industrialization and oil spills. The body of water is historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf. Some Arab governments refer to it as the Arabian Gulf or The Gulf, but neither term is recognized internationally. The name Gulf of Iran is used by the International Hydrographic Organization.The Persian Gulf resides in the Persian Gulf Basin, which is of Cenozoic origin and related to the subduction of the Arabian Plate under the Zagros Mountains. The current flooding of the basin started 15,000 years ago due to rising sea levels of the Holocene glacial retreat.
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