Arabian Plate

The Arabian Plate, also called the Circum-Arabian tectonic plate, is a minor tectonic plate covering roughly 5,000,000 square kilometers across the Arabian Peninsula, the Sinai Peninsula, the Red Sea and the Levant. It was part of the African Plate through most of the Phanerozoic Eon until it separated in the Oligocene, about 25 million years ago, and has been moving northward toward Eurasia ever since at 15 to 20 millimeters per year relative to Africa. It borders the Indo-Australian Plate to the east, the African and Somali plates to the south and west, and the Anatolian and Eurasian plates to the north, meeting Africa along the Dead Sea Transform and the Red Sea Rift. Its ongoing collision with Eurasia is what pushes up the Zagros Mountains of Iran.