Iranian Gulf — West Coast

Persian Gulf Iran West stretches along Iran's southern coast from the Shatt al-Arab border with Iraq east toward Bandar Imam Khomeini and the northern Gulf's industrial waterfront. This is a coast shaped more by geopolitics and petrochemical infrastructure than by natural coastal geography — oil terminals, tanker anchorages, and refineries define much of the shoreline. Abadan and Khorramshahr, cities at the heart of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, front a coast where the Karun and Shatt al-Arab rivers pour freshwater into the saltwater Gulf, creating a brackish transition zone of extraordinary ecological productivity. Tidal ranges here are modest, 0.8 to 1.5 metres, in a semi-diurnal pattern. The freshwater mixing zone supports enormous populations of shrimp, mullet, and barramundi-like fish that sustain artisanal fishing communities working small wooden boats in the river channels and near-shore waters. Traditional fishing settlements pre-date the industrial era by millennia — this coast was the Babylonian and Elamite heartland for maritime trade with the Indus Valley civilisation.