Melnikov et al. (2014) recognized four species within what was previously considered Phrynocephalus arabicus, elevating the two recognized subspecies (P. a. macropeltis and P. a. nedjensis) to species level, and describing a new species from Iran: P. ahvazicus. The Reptile Database (Uetz et al. 2018) describes the description of the new species as ""rather confusing"" due to a lack of clarity about the tissue samples used and inconsistencies between the number of specimens studied and those reported in their results. Melnikov et al. (2014) do not formally redescribe P. arabicus or fully diagnose or characterize the distributions of P. macropeltis or P. nedjensis. AData deficientitionally, the authors report that morphological differentiation between P. arabicus and P. macropeltis requires further investigation.The Reptile Database (Uetz et al. 2018) consequently currently recommends rejecting the action of Melnikov et al. (2014) pending further research, and this scheme is followed here. Although Uetz et al. (2018) treat P. ahvazicus as a valid species, recognizing it as distinct would render P. arabicus sensu lato paraphyletic based on the molecular results presented by Melnikov et al. (2014). P. ahvazicus is consequently retained within P. arabicus here.