Iranian state television said that Iran's Foreign Ministry threatened to take legal action against Google on Thursday for dropping the name Persian Gulf from its Google Maps application and thereby leaving the waterway running between Iran and the Arab states nameless, Reuters reported.

One of the seditionist actions taken in the soft war against the Iranian nation, has been Google's shameless act to drop the name 'Persian Gulf'… which goes against historical documents," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Designation of the key waterway for global oil and gas supplies has long been a sensitive issue among its bordering countries. Iran only refers to the stretch of water as the Persian Gulf, whereas the Arab states prefer to use the term Arabian Gulf. Foreign language descriptions can offend either party when they use one or the other, or leave the adjective out of the equation altogether.