Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. At 3,237,500 km², the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan. The biggest of these is Saudi Arabia. The Peninsula, plus Bahrain, the Socotra Archipelago, and other nearby islands form a geopolitical region called Arabia. 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 critical geopolitical role in the Arab world and globally due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.
