I'm Persian also. I know a thing or two about the issue.
@ IN JAIL U MY HOE - Dawg, The Persian Gulf is a large Sea/Ocean area under Iran which happens to extend and border other Middle Eastern countries. It has nothing to do with the people's culture.
Persians are not Arabs, just like how Mexicans are not Salvadorian, the Chinese are not Filipino etc.
But the history of that area runs deeper than the others, because the Persian army took over damm near all of Middle East thousands of years ago, they even took over parts of China, Russia, Africa etc. Their headquarters where they operated out of, was in the middle of Middle East which is now known as Iran. As a whole, it was known as the Persian Empire, the biggest known to man kind. Now ofcourse in those how many thousand years they were in power, Persians fucked around and had kids wit Arabics, Africans, Russians etc. So there is not too many PURE Persians no more, but fact is, they are still Persians. The people that considered themselves Persians returned to the head quarters aka Iran after all the other countries started taking power back. The area that the rest of the Persians remained after losing all the land they conquered was named Iran. It's a real complex subject that will take months of explaning. This isn't your typical 200 year American History. It runs 7000 years deep.