Quarto
Unknown Enemy
To be fair, Chris, I also studied political science (well... international relations, it's not quite the same thing, but close), and I definitely have come across various sources that referred to the Iran/Iraq war as the Gulf War. But I've also seen a lot of sources (the majority, most likely) that referred to it as the Iran/Iraq war, and just about every post-1990 book I've seen does that rather than calling it the Gulf War. In that aspect, I guess it may be a little bit like WWI - before WWII came along, it was called the Great War. But after WWII, it just didn't seem that great any more.
And as for the reason why people would've called it the Gulf War in the first place... well, I can think of at least two reasons. Firsly, because Iran/Iraq sounds more like slash fiction than a war
. In general, people prefer to come up with names that don't involve slashes (Falklands War, WWII, WWI, American War of Independence, 1812 War, and so on). The second reason is that the US and other countries ended up having to get involved because the war has spread onto the Persian Gulf itself, with attacks on neutral tankers and the like. This was certainly the first war to be fought on the Gulf, at least in the 20th century.
And as for the reason why people would've called it the Gulf War in the first place... well, I can think of at least two reasons. Firsly, because Iran/Iraq sounds more like slash fiction than a war
. In general, people prefer to come up with names that don't involve slashes (Falklands War, WWII, WWI, American War of Independence, 1812 War, and so on). The second reason is that the US and other countries ended up having to get involved because the war has spread onto the Persian Gulf itself, with attacks on neutral tankers and the like. This was certainly the first war to be fought on the Gulf, at least in the 20th century.
