Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan.[8] The biggest of these is Saudi Arabia.[9] The Peninsula, plus Bahrain, the Socotra Archipelago, and other nearby islands form a geopolitical region called Arabia, which is the largest region in the world without any permanent rivers.[10]
The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and southwest, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. The peninsula plays a