Bahrain History. The Politics, Governance, National Economy, Population, Tourism. The gulf has been an important waterway since ancient times, bringing the people who live on its shores into early contact with other civilizations. In the ancient world, the gulf peoples established trade connections with India; in the Middle Ages, they went as far as China; and in the modern era, they became involved with the European powers that sailed into the Indian Ocean and around Southeast Asia. In the twentieth century, the discovery of massive oil deposits in the gulf made the area once again a crossroads for the modern world. Bahrain History. The Politics, Governance, National Economy, Population, Tourism. ANY THREAT TO THE STABILITY of the Persian Gulf endangering the region's oil flow greatly concerns the rest of the world. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the opening stage in more than a decade of upheaval. The outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq in 1980, the expansion of the war to nonbelligerent shipping, and the presence of foreign naval flotillas in the gulf followed. When general hostilities eventually broke out, they arose from an unexpected quarter--Iraq's sweep into Kuwait in August 1990 and the possibility of Iraqi forces continuing down the gulf coast to seize other oil-rich Arab states. The smaller Arab regimes volunteered use of their ports and airfields as bases for the coalition of forces in Operation Desert Storm to defeat Iraq