Sultan Haitham’s regional priorities

Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said has completed his official visits to the Arab Gulf states (in addition to Jordan, a “Gulf” country that is not a GCC member). 

Since his first official visit in 2021 to Saudi Arabia and his trips to Kuwait and Jordan a few days ago, the sultan of Oman has been keen to re-emphasise the tenets of Omani diplomacy which he inherited from the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said. 

A lot has changed in the Middle East since the days of Qaboos. In particular, the region has witnessed many major new developments over the past three years. The Omanis, known for their neutrality and quiet role in crises, have always tried to present themselves as reliable mediators and as a Gulf country that does not take sides in regional conflicts.

But regional disputes do eventually impose themselves on their agenda. Oman may not change its position on any particular issue or crisis, but the other parties usually change their positions due to the nature of conflicts. At the beginning of Sultan Haitham’s reign, the biggest crisis in the region stemmed from the Yemen conflict. Today, the Gaza war dominates politics in the region, forcing everyone to announce his position, regardless of any reservations about the two main belligerents in the conflict, Israel and Hamas. 

Contrary to what many believe, Iran has always sought to present itself to the Omanis as a reliable ally even before the Iranian Revolution. During a press interview decades ago, Sultan Qaboos said that Oman will not forget Iran’s support for the sultanate during the Omani civil war. Qaboos was referring to the Shah’s position when he sent Iranian forces to back the sultan’s troops as they struggled to quash the double rebellion of Jabal Akhdar and Dhofar. In line with its strategic view of the region, Oman has always acted upon the premiss that there is an Iranian state which transcends the regime in place, whether before or after the revolution. This position was more than once reiterated by former Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi. 

Based on conclusions drawn from the past, one can say this is not simply a state of political inertia between two countries that are close to each other regardless of their ruling regimes. Rather it is a situation based upon a particular understanding of the political geography of the ever-changing region. 

The Omanis will remain close to the Iranians. But they will have to set their own priorities. At the beginning of Sultan Haitham’s rule, the top player in the region was Iran. Tehran supplied the Houthis with all the means to fight the Arab coalition during the Yemen war (although some of the logistical, intelligence and political support was provided by the Omanis). Iran celebrated with the Syrians the defeat of the opposition forces in the Syrian civil war in which Tehran took part. It celebrated with Iraqis Tehran’s hegemony over the Iraqi state both directly and via its proxies, the Popular Mobilisation Forces. The United States prepared to rush out of the region, and indeed no one doubted its serious intent to withdraw after what had happened in Afghanistan. 

But then there was the Ukraine war and subsequently its related disruption of oil, gas and food supplies. And more recently there was the Gaza war which muddled the nature of the conflict in the region and reshuffled its priorities. Iran did not limit itself to backing the Houthis in their push to control over large parts of Yemen, but took advantage of the situation to tamper with the security of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It thought of this as a major strategic gain and key asset in its hands. Historically, the sultanate of Oman has been keen on neutrality, but its ultimate bet in matters of security was and remains on the West, and more specifically on the United States. 

When the administration of US President Jimmy Carter decided to carry out Operation “Eagle’s Claw” in 1980 to free the hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran by supporters of Khomeini’s new revolutionary regime, the planes carrying out the mission took off from the Omani island of Masirah. At the height of the Iran-Iraq war, during Oman’s promotion of its notion of neutrality, the United States used to store tens of thousands of tonnes of military hardware in the Omani desert, to prepare for any Iranian threat to the region. Oman is a close ally of Iran, but that alliance is not at the expense of the interests of others in the region.  

Despite the gains it reaped from the Houthi moves against maritime navigation, Iran has found itself strategically exposed in Gaza’s wider regional battleground. Tehran failed to carry out many of its threats, especially its loud but ineffective threat to lend support to Gaza and its people. Later on, the Iranian response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus constituted a turning point in how Iranian power is judged. None of the hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones was able to penetrate the Western-Israeli defence shield. Iran’s muscle flexing contracted following this resounding failure. Tehran’s Omani ally took note of the limits of Iran’s capabilities, and there is no doubt that Muscat adjusted its discourse in dealing with Tehran. It is likely to have tried to convince the Iranians to bring down tensions after the failure of their military response. 

The Gaza War has ended all notions of Omani-Israeli rapprochement. The 2018 visit by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Muscat is a thing of the past. Equally, the 1994 travel to Oman by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is a distant memory that is hardly recalled nowadays by either Omanis or Israelis. Oman has moved closer to the Palestinians and is displaying more empathy towards their suffering while the Israelis have harmed themselves even more than they have harmed the region. They boycotted the Palestinians for years and then responded with unprecedented cruelty to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which was carried out by the Hamas Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated movement with Iran’s encouragement. Any prospect of a potential relationship between Oman and Israel has been swept away by the “flood.”

Sultan Haitham’s official visits to the Gulf countries therefore seek to arrange the sultanate’s priorities in this changing world. The port of Duqm is a vital access point to the Indian Ocean, but Oman realises that it is also a potential area of operations for the Iranians and the Houthis. It is not in Oman’s interest that the current state of instability and ongoing Houthi threats against maritime navigation continue. Oman wants to attract more investments to Duqm, the way Kuwait has been quietly drawn into investing there. The sultanate needs stable oil prices, which will not be possible without coordination with the major OPEC+ countries. There can be no calm in Yemen’s Hadramawt and Al-Mahra without close coordination with the two main coalition members, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Would it have been possible to see signs of reconciliation between Bahrain and Iran without an Omani role? Sultan Haitham’s visit to Jordan is a reminder that the northern edge of the Gulf is an integral part of the region’s security, whether or not Jordan is on the formal list of Gulf Cooperation Council members. The Omanis are watching with wariness the consequences of any exaggerated regional rapprochement with the Iranians, such as that pursued by Doha and Tehran. They see Qatar being dragged into a confused situation in which Doha postures as a mediator, while it seeks to erase part of its recent history with Iran and Hamas. 

The most important lesson from Sultan Haitham’s visits to the Gulf states is that Oman, which may seem to be removed from the region’s political pulse, or to be close to its Iranian ally, has no safe harbour except among its own people in the Arab region.  

Dr Haitham El-Zobaidi is the executive editor of Al Arab Publishing  Group.