How Oman Lost Its Mojo as the Switzerland of the Mideast

The Sultanate of Oman, which has gained status as “Switzerland of the Mideast” by midwifing President Obama’s 2015 Iran deal, is fast losing its status as mediator of Washington-Tehran pacts. After the Islamic Republic suspended diplomatic talks with America on Monday, few looked at Muscat to reemerge as the go-between. The comparison to Switzerland’s “neutrality” is apt in a way, but it’s far from complimentary. In World War II Swiss banks laundered vast quantities of Nazi-looted gold. They held Third Reich accounts and stashed away assets of Nazi victims. Close ties to neighboring Germany helped the Swiss establish its status as mediator between Hitler and the allies. Oman’s relations with neighboring Iran go back to the Shah days. Its subsequent ties with the Islamic Republic include bypassing American and international sanctions. Iranian banks remain active in Oman in violation of President Trump’s revamped “maximum pressure” policy.Helping Iran evade sanctions has catapulted Oman to the status of mediator. Mr. Obama’s envoys launched at Muscat the negotiations that led to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Oman also mediated between President Trump’s team and Tehran’s envoys on the eve of the February 28 launch of “Epic Fury.”Currently Muscat maintains close ties with Tehran even though Iranian jets recently attacked Oman’s southern ports. That alliance diminishes Sultan Haitham bin Tariq’s ability to chaperone American-Iranian diplomacy. Missteps also damage Muscat alliances with Gulf allies who are constantly attacked by Iranian drones and missiles. “Undermining its role as an effective mediator, separating itself from its Gulf neighbors, angering the U.S., and cozying up to Iran — this all can’t end well for Oman,” a former American ambassador to Muscat, Marc Sievers, wrote recently. Mr. Trump surprised reporters last week when asked about Tehran’s plan for a joint Iranian-Omani control of traffic and toll collection in the strait of Hormuz. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” the president said, leading some to wonder if he was actually talking about Iran, rather than Oman. Mr. Trump did not misspeak, though. “Oman, in particular, should know that the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved — directly or indirectly — in facilitating tolls for the Strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X a day later. How Did We Get Here?Mediation has always topped Muscat’s statecraft, a Mideast professor emeritus at the University of Haifa, Amatzia Bar’am, tells the Sun. “They’re seeking stability,” Mr. Bar’am, who has visited Oman as a guest of the former Sultan, the late Qaboos bin Said, says. “Oman is a stable country internally, but they are always worried about upheaval in the region.”In the early 1970s South Yemeni tribes backed by Communist China attempted to overtake Oman. Muscat appealed for help from Britain and to its neighbor, Shah Reza Pahlavi’s Iran. The British and Iranians slaughtered the Yemeni tribesmen, and saved Oman. Unlike Shiite-majority Iran, the Omanis are mostly Kharijites, a sect that in the seventh century split from Shia founder, Caliph Ali, over a theological dispute that led to a bloody fight. Yet Sultan Qaboos was so grateful for Iran’s help in fending off the Yemeni tribes, that he tightened Tehran relations even after the 1979 revolution.Ties with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei helped Sultan Qaboos launch Mr. Obama’s talks that led to the JCPOA. “The Iranians told the Omanis there would be no deal until America acknowledged Iran’s right to enrich uranium,” the founder of Middle East Media Research, Yigal Carmon, tells the Sun. Secretary of State John Kerry, he adds, eventually relented and gave the Omanis a letter that affirmed that Iranian “right.” A way was then paved to a nuclear deal. For better or worse, the JCPOA’s Oman track was successful because Sultan Qaboos recognized his country’s strength as a small player that could present itself as an honest broker. His successor and cousin, Sultan Haitham, made the mistake of raising Muscat’s profile, critics say.“Oman and the region would be better off if Sultan Haitham orders a return to a more traditional ‘small and quiet’ brand of mediation and diplomacy,” ambassador Sievers writes. Oman and Epic FuryMuscat’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, went on CBS Face the Nation on February 27. “I am confident, and in my assessment of the way the talks are going, I think there is, really I can see that the peace deal is within our reach,” he said. At the same time American and Israeli jets were ready to launch a second set of strikes on Iranian targets, following last June’s twelve-day war.“Just as many Democrats remain justifiably angry at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu coming to Washington to lobby publicly against Obama’s decision to make a nuclear deal with Iran, many Republicans remain justifiably angry at the Omani Foreign Minister for lobbying publicly against US policy,” Mr. Seivers writes. Mr. Albusaidi went further in criticizing Mr. Trump in a subsequent essay in The Economist, arguing that the American president launched a war on behalf of a foreign country. “For Israel to achieve its stated objective will require a long military campaign to which America would have to commit troops on the ground,” the Omani foreign minister wrote. In the past, Oman refrained from public criticism of its ally, America, and while it was not a signatory to the Abraham Accords, it even maintained quiet relations with Israel as well. Then, in 2018, Mr. Netanyahu visited Muscat on Sultan Qaboos’s invitation. The widely publicized visit led to no breakthrough in the sultan’s attempt to mediate an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough. Can Oman Recapture Goal as Mediator?“I think we’ve been talking too much, if you want to know the truth. I think going silent would be very good” for diplomacy, Mr. Trump wrote on TruthSocial Monday after Tehran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, publicly announced suspension of talks with America.The president, a prolific user of social media and of press conferences to promote his goals, is far from an ideal messenger for the wisdom of quiet diplomacy. Unlike the leader of the world’s top power, though, bombastic public statements can be devastating for a small country like Oman. Muscat’s hope of promoting detente between warring powers is mostly dashed. Then again, is a quiet Omani mediation good for America to begin with? “Western policymakers too easily fall in love with backroom diplomacy,” Mr. Carmon of MEMRI says. “So much so, that they at times believe that secret negotiations are the goal, rather than the promotion of their interests.”

How Oman Lost Its Mojo as the Switzerland of the Mideast

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