The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf War, Gulf War I, or the Iraq War, before the term "Iraq War" became identified instead with the 2003 Iraq War (also referred to in the U.S. as "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops that began 2 August 1990 was met with international condemnation, and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. U.S. President George H. W. Bush deployed American forces into Saudi Arabia, and urged other countries to send their own forces to the scene. An array of nations joined the coalition. The great majority of the military forces in the coalition were from the United States, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order. Around US$36 billion of the US$60 billion cost was paid by Saudi Arabia.

Maziar “Maz” Jobrani (Persian: مازیار جبرانی‎; born February 26, 1972) is an Iranian-born American comedian who is part of the "Axis of Evil" comedy group. The group appeared on a comedy special on Comedy Central. Jobrani has also appeared in numerous films, television shows, including Better Off Ted, on radio, and in comedy clubs. His filmography includes roles in The Interpreter, Friday After Next, and Dragonfly.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Jobrani and his parents moved to California when he was six years old. He was raised in Tiburon in the San Francisco Bay area. He attended Redwood High School in Larkspur. Jobrani studied political science and Italian at UC Berkeley, where he received a B.A. degree. He was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at UCLA when he decided to pursue his childhood dream of acting and performing comedy.

He has since made appearances on shows like The Colbert Report, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Talkshow with Spike Feresten, and regularly performs at top comedy clubs (in California and New York) such as The Comedy Store. He made an appearance as a dental patient on an episode of Still Standing, in the pilot episodes of Better Off Ted, The Knights of Prosperity, and on an episode of Cedric the Entertainer Presents. He also made an appearance in 13 Going on 30. Jobrani will play Mohammed Jazeyeri in the upcoming ABC sitcom Funny in Farsi, based on the book of the same name. He has toured with the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. He provided the voice of Ahmed Farahnakian in the audiobook version of World War Z. Jobrani has written a movie with a friend called Jimmy Vestvood: American Hero.

The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians. The synonymous usage of Iranian and Persian has persisted over the centuries although some modern Western sources use Iranic/Iranian as a wider term that includes the term Persian as well as related Iranian languages and ethnic groups. However, these terms have been used both synonymously as well as in a complementary fashion since ancient times; as the Ancient Iranian peoples such as the Old Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Parthians and Avesta peoples considered themselves to be part of the greater Iranian ethnic stock.

The term Persian translates to "from or of Persis" which is a region north of the Persian Gulf located in Pars, Iran. It was from this region that Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid empire, united all other Iranian empires (such as the Medes and the Elamites), and expanded the Persian cultural and social influences by incorporating the Babylonian empire, and the Lydian empire. Although not the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid empire is the first Persian empire well recognized by Greek and Persian historians for its massive cultural, military and social influences going as far as Athens, Egypt, and Libya.

Mary Renault (pronounced /rɛnoʊlt/ Ren-olt) (4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983) born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.

Born at Dacre Lodge, 49 Plashet Road, Forest Gate, Essex (now in London), Renault was educated at St Hugh's College of Oxford University, then an all-women's college, receiving an undergraduate degree in English in 1928. In 1933, she began training as a nurse at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary. During her training, she met Julie Mullard, a fellow nurse with whom she established a life-long romantic relationship.

She worked as a nurse while beginning a writing career, treating Dunkirk evacuees at the Winford Emergency Hospital in Bristol, and working in Radcliffe Infirmary's brain surgery ward until 1945. She published her first novel, Purposes of Love, in 1939; it had a contemporary setting, like her other early novels, which novelist Linda Proud described as "a strange combination of Platonism and hospital romance". Her 1943 novel The Friendly Young Ladies, about a lesbian relationship between a writer and a nurse, seems inspired by her own relationship with Miss Mullard.