The Persian Gulf (Persian: خلیج فارس‎, romanized: Xalij-e Fârs, lit. 'Gulf of Fars') 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.[1] The Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline.

The body of water is historically and internationally known as the "Persian Gulf".[2][3][4] Some Arab governments refer to it as the "Arabian Gulf" (Arabic: ٱلْخَلِيْج ٱلْعَرَبِي‎, romanized: Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī) or "The Gulf",[5] but neither term is recognized globally. The name "Gulf of Iran (Persian Gulf)" is used by the International Hydrographic Organization.[6]

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 (mostly rocky, but also coral), and abundant pearl oysters, but its ecology has been damaged by industrialization and oil spills.

The Persian Gulf is in the Persian Gulf Basin, which is of Cenozoic origin and related to the subduction of the Arabian Plate under the Zagros Mountains.[7] The current flooding of the basin started 15,000 years ago due to rising sea levels of the Holocene glacial retreat.[8]