WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Arabia, according to two U.S. officials.

Arab nations have pushed for a change to the geographic name of the body of water off the southern coast of Iran, while Iran has maintained its historic ties to the gulf.

The two U.S. officials spoke with The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The White House and National Security Council did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf of Arabia” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps.

On Google Maps in the U.S., the body of water appears as Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf). Apple Maps only says the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. military for years has unilaterally referred to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf in statements and images it releases.

The name of the body of water has become an emotive issue for Iranians who embrace their country’s long history as the Persian Empire. A spat developed in 2017 during Trump’s first term when he used the name Arabian Gulf for the waterway. Iran’s president at the time, Hassan Rouhani, suggested Trump needed to “study geography.”

“Everyone knew Trump’s friendship was for sale to the highest bidder. We now know that his geography is, too,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote online at the time.

On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister also weighed in, saying that names of Mideast waterways do “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity.”

“Politically motivated attempts to alter the historically established name of the Persian Gulf are indicative of hostile intent toward Iran and its people, and are firmly condemned,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on the social platform X.

“Any short-sighted step in this connection will have no validity or legal or geographical effect, it will only bring the wrath of all Iranians from all walks of life and political persuasion in Iran, the U.S. and across the world.”

Trump can change the name for official U.S. purposesbut he can’t dictate what the rest of the world calls it.

The International Hydrographic Organization — of which the United States is a member — works to ensure all the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them. There are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentation.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, Trump is also set to visit Doha, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which also lie on the body of water. Originally planned as Trump’s first trip overseas since he took office on Jan. 20, it comes as Trump has tried to draw closer to the Gulf countries as he seeks their financial investment in the U.S. and support in regional conflicts, including resolving the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and limiting Iran’s advancing nuclear program.

The U.S. president also has significant financial ties to the countries through his personal businesses, over which he has retained ownership from the Oval Office.

The move comes several months after Trump said the U.S. would refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

The Associated Press sued the Trump administration earlier this year after the White House barred its journalists from covering most events because of the organization’s decision not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” within the United States.

U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled last month that the First Amendment protects the AP from government retaliation over its word choice and ordered the outlet’s access to be reinstated.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

Former college football coach Nick Saban’s reported attempt to urge President Donald Trump to wield his influence over the payment of college athletes, which was first detailed by The Wall Street Journalis rubbing some people the wrong way.

It’s hard to fault them.

Saban, who has denied that name, image and likeness rules allowing student-athletes to get paid, or NIL, led him to retire from coaching last year, has been working with Republicans in Congress to clamp down on those rules ever since he left his post at the University of Alabama.

Last year, I wrote about Saban testifying at a Senate hearing on NIL rules as a guest of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and arguing that players show “less resiliency to overcome adversity” due to the current setup. He said two NFL coaches had told him that players have become too entitled and that his wife had said the only thing players care about these days is how much they’re getting paid. These were rich comments coming from Saban, who retired as the highest-paid coach in college football.

College football analyst Spencer Hall basically summarized my concerns in a recent sit-down with sports commentator Bomani Jones, in which Hall questioned Trump’s capability to navigate this complex issue — despite the two of them acknowledging that the current NIL setup probably is in need of some alterations.

The question, of course, is whether Trump, someone w Ho Helped Run the United States Football League into the groundis suited to make the sensible changes necessary.

Sports commentator Jemele Hill doesn’t seem to think so. She sent a cheeky message to college athletes after it was reported that Saban and Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., another former college coach who has bemoaned the current systemwere pushing Trump to sign an executive order on NIL.

“Pay attention college athletes .. bet you didn’t know this when or if you voted,” she wrote. “NCAA has dropped a cool $250K to lobbyists to seize control of NIL.

“Good luck!”

Attorneys at the Hagens Berman law firm, which helped secure a nearly $3 billion settlement with the NCAA related to antitrust lawsuits involving college athletes, are also skeptical. Per AL.com:

“While he was a coach, Saban initially opposed NIL payments to athletes, pushing to add restrictions and red tape through national legislation to add ‘some sort of control.’ During his time scrutinizing the athlete pay structure, he made tens of millions of dollars and was previously the highest-paid coach in college football,” Berman said.

“Coach Saban and Trump’s eleventh-hour talks of executive orders and other meddling are just more unneeded self-involvement. College athletes are spearheading historic changes and benefitting massively from NIL deals. They don’t need this unmerited interference from a coach only seeking to protect the system that made him tens of millions.”

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

As the Trump administration looks to expand its dubious plans to deport immigrants to foreign landsthey’re apparently looking to war-torn countries with poor human rights records to essentially serve as deterrents for future immigrants.

Having already sent nearly 300 immigrants — who’ve been framed as hardened criminals despite many of them appearing to have no criminal record whatsoever — to El Salvador’s brutal CECOT prison, the administration is planning to expand its deportations to Libya, NBC News reported. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that imminent deportation flights to Libya, or any other third country, without due process would violate his temporary restraining order.

It’s noteworthy that top Libyan officials denied that any arrangement is in place to accept immigrants from the United States, though the country’s provisional government suggested that “some parallel parties that are not subject to legitimacy” could be involved.

At the moment, Libya is effectively divided into two factions that are fighting for control of the country, which has been wrought by war and strife after the U.S.-backed coup that dislodged Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Libya’s treatment of immigrants has been decried by human rights activistsand, given the dehumanizing things Trump has said to malign immigrants — such as his claim that they are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. — it’s fair to wonder whether the administration sees Libya’s brutality as a benefit in this case.

And the same goes for Rwanda, whose foreign minister recently confirmed that his government was in “early talks” with the Trump administration about accepting immigrants. As multiple critics of such a deal recently explained to NPRRwanda is also plagued by human rights abuses:

Even without the expense, critics sayRwanda’s abysmal rights record under President Paul Kagame means it’s no place to resettle people.

“Rwanda under the long-ruling Kagame dictatorship is simply not a safe country, it’s a totalitarian police state by any standard,” said Jeffrey Smith, founder of pro-democracy nonprofit Vanguard Africa.

Michela Wrong, a journalist and author of a book on Rwanda, also said the country is not a suitable place to send deportees.

“This is a country where the elections are routinely rigged, where opposition activists disappear and are found murdered…where opposition leaders aren’t allowed to run in the elections, journalists are jailed or end up fleeing the country,” she said.

The Trump administration could easily look to Britain — which previously attempted a deportation arrangement with Rwanda that has widely been considered an expensive failure — for reasons why this might be a bad idea. But the administration’s multimillion-dollar prison deal with El Salvador already proves that it’s willing to waste money on cruel stunts.

But the administration’s multimillion-dollar prison deal with El Salvador already proves that it’s willing to waste money on cruel stunts.

It’s worth noting that Trump doesn’t appear to carry high regard for African nations. As you may remember, he labeled them as “shithole countries,” along with El Salvador and Haiti, during an Oval Office meeting back in 2018. He has offered no mea culpa for those bigoted remarks, so the fact he essentially wants to dump immigrants in these same places — and potentially even U.S. citizens — suggests he is seeking to punish his party’s perceived enemies and effectively threatening anyone who might defy his warped, authoritarian perception of law and order.

It certainly seems to set up a perverse reward structure for other countries. Why shore up your human rights abuses to get on America’s good side — as countries have historically had to do — when you can just tailor your brutality so it aligns with the Trump administration’s mission?

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”