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President Donald Trump is expected to announce that the U.S. will refer to the Persian Gulf as the Gulf of Arabia, multiple sources announced late Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, the president plans to announce the news during his trip to the Middle East next week, specifically Saudi Arabia.
The body of water has been known as the Persian Gulf since the sixteenth century, though some countries in the Middle East have used the names Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Arabia.
The change will likely be seen as an offense to Iran, the nation historically known as Persia, which has long been connected with the influential waterway.
It is unclear whether the announcement is the same as the “big” news Trump teased about the Middle East during his Tuesday meeting with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House.
“We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make, like as big as it gets,” Trump said. “And I won’t tell you on what … and it’s very positive.”
“It’ll be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject, very important subject.”
Another possibility could be the addition of another nation joining the historic Abraham Accords, potentially including Saudi Arabia.
U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said that new deals could be made during the Trump administration.
“There are many efforts underway—humanitarian aid initiatives for Gaza, which we applaud, the expansion of the Abraham Peace Accords, which we think will have some or a lot of announcements very, very shortly, which we hope will yield great progress by next year, and discussions on regional challenges in the Middle East like Syria, Lebanon and of course Iran, and we agree that they shall never get a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Current nations included in the Abraham Accords agreement include Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, all of which agreed to normalize relations with Israel in 2020. The Biden administration unsuccessfully sought to expand the accords with Saudi Arabia and other nations in the Middle East.
