Oman’s Foreign Minister to the West: You’ve been containing the wrong country

Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi penned an op-ed for the French outlet Le Monde on Tuesday. The article was a call for a new political and security architecture in the Gulf region, and served as a clear indictment not only for the current, disastrous war of choice that the United States and Israel initiated against Iran, but of forty-seven years of Western policy in the Gulf region.

The attention-grabbing statement comes when al-Busaidi notes the fundamental flaw of international policy in the Gulf was that it treated Iran as an existential threat to the security of the gulf region. In fact, he argues, the real threat comes from “decisions that are made in Tel Aviv.”

Unfortunately, although al-Busaidi is correct in his assertion, he merely states it as fact. He does nothing to support that point. That is a sorely missed opportunity.

Al-Busaidi has some genuine cache in diplomatic circles. He was the negotiator who managed to win a deal between the U.S. and Iran in February that would have significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program and allow for intrusive inspections. Donald Trump chose to blow that deal up by attacking Iran instead, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

If al-Busaidi had decided to use some of that credibility to elaborate on why Israel is the threat to Gulf stability rather than Iran, it would have been impactful. 

By publishing in Le Monde, a news source that has considerable respect in Europe, he spoke to an audience that not only consists of French citizens, but much of Europe’s elite, including its political leaders. That audience would have benefited from a call to focus on Israel as the source of Mideast instability. 

Still, the key point he does make is crucial: that the American policy of focusing on “containing” Iran has failed and a new security arrangement for the region must be mapped out and pursued.

Al-Busaidi wrote, “The accumulation of massive military spending in the region, the expansion of American bases in the Gulf, and the maintenance of a distant, protective military presence were developed and sustained at colossal cost, but without any real benefit.”

That is the fundamental truth al-Busaidi argues was exposed by this war. The policy of belligerent “containment” of Iran was always the wrong policy. 

While al-Busaidi wishes to avoid getting bogged down in history (it was, after all, an op-ed so he had limited space), it’s worth keeping in mind how that policy developed.

A policy born of racism and pettiness

American policy toward post-revolutionary Iran rested on economic isolation and limiting Iran’s ability to develop weapons technology, especially missiles. But enforcing trade sanctions and fear of potential Iranian retaliation led to the massive military buildup al-Busaidi referred to.

After the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis sundered U.S.-Iranian relations, the United States breached the agreement under which Iran had released the hostages, and the entire episode laid the foundation for a politics of resentment that has defined U.S. policy ever since.

Those of us who remember the hostage crisis of 1979 and then the early years of Ronald Reagan’s administration can easily describe not only the political but the cultural hostility to Iran that developed at that time. The hatred of Islam and Muslims was clear and was expressed by contrasting the emerging theocracy of the Islamic Republic with the false image of the freer, secular reign of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. 

There was little public consciousness in those years of the brutality of the Shah’s rule or of the United States’ role in ousting the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh and installing the Shah in 1953. There was only the fear of a theocratic, Muslim republic and the rage at having been humiliated by what was considered a ragtag bunch of revolutionaries in a backward country.

That was the foundation of what al-Busaidi calls the policy of “containment” of Iran. That policy ebbed and flowed over the years. Sometimes it was modified if the United States wanted something from Iran, such as the release of hostages being held in Lebanon (which led to the Iran-Contra scandal) or help in fighting al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks.

But the belligerence was always quick to assert itself and was always more than sufficient to frustrate any Iranian outreach to the United States, which was attempted by Iran several times over the years.

The policy held until Barack Obama tightened it to press Iran to the negotiating table that eventually led to JCPOA, a deal which Obama hoped would, over time, lead to a thawing of relations between the U.S. and Iran and a gradual reintegration of Iran into the Gulf’s diplomatic sphere.

This was, of course, all upended by Donald Trump, who instituted a policy of “maximum pressure” that greatly increased the economic hardships being inflicted on Iran, and which was not significantly mitigated by Joe Biden in his four ineffectual years in office.

Al-Busaidi diplomatically avoids this history because he is trying to progress to a more pragmatic policy, not engage in recriminatory rhetoric with the United States. But his one declarative statement about Israel shows that he is willing to engage in recriminations on that front.

Israel, the source of instability

Al-Busaidi says, “It will be necessary to challenge certain assumptions inherited from the past in order to identify partnerships likely to genuinely strengthen the security of the Gulf States – and, by extension, that of the international community – while distinguishing those that, on the contrary, create additional vulnerabilities.”

Though avoiding naming countries, there is a clear implication here that reflects some self-evident conclusions that are inescapably drawn from this war. 

The war itself was driven entirely by factors outside of the Gulf. It was started because of the President of the United States’ ego, arrogance, and gullibility, which were expertly manipulated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in pursuit of his regional, national, and military goals.

Al-Busaidi is proposing a new security architecture that, while not excluding the United States, is insulated against Israel or any other state outside of the Gulf generating this kind of regional devastation. 

There is only one way to do that, and that is through a security coalition that includes Iran, Iraq, and the six GCC states. It means significantly diminishing the American presence in the Gulf region, both on land and in the sea; repairing the damage to Iran and the Gulf’s energy infrastructure; and finding a broad agreement on Palestine. 

None of that would be easy to accomplish, although a good deal of it is already in progress. 

There is already strong sentiment in the Gulf that the American military presence does much more harm than good, and the massive expense to the U.S. will reduce any American resistance to withdrawing. 

Iraq has already gotten Trump to commit to a full military withdrawal by the end of September, although other states are likely to wait until the war ends to press for something similar.

The now-defunct MOU included substantial arrangements for rebuilding efforts. And these will undoubtedly be a part of any end of hostilities agreement going forward. Iran has certainly made it clear that they will not agree to ceasefires again if such arrangements are not in place. 

On Palestine, the matter will be trickier. It is extremely unlikely that the Gulf Arab states will want to move closer to Iran’s position of confrontation with Israel in defense of the Palestinians. And Iran is not going to suddenly open itself to normalization like Saudi Arabia has done. 

Equally, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have shown no inclination at all to severing their normalized relations with Israel, although the UAE’s initial movement toward even tighter commitment to the Abraham Accords seems lately to have given way to a more tentative approach.

But some broader agreement between all these states is possible. That can include joint pressure on Israel to abide by a ceasefire agreement that includes Lebanon and expand that to Syria and Gaza. Immediate pressure for a full withdrawal by Israel from all the territories beyond the internationally recognized border (the pre-1967 line) is too much to hope for in the near term, as is a full acknowledgment of Palestinian rights that can lead to a real solution. But the combined forces of the GCC, Iraq, and Iran, working with the Arab League can at least be reasonably hoped to be able to push Israel back to the occupation lines of October 6, 2023. 

A vision of stability

That would seem to be the sort of arrangement al-Busaidi is hoping for. Such a grouping could then move to what he correctly names as the crucial next step of formulating a permanent arrangement for the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab. 

That arrangement, he writes, would rebalance regional alliances “so that they better reflect the strategic realities revealed by the recent war.”

That is a call for accepting reality: that Iran will always be able to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz just as Ansar Allah (the Houthis) will always be able to do the same with the Bab al-Mandab. Rather than tilt at windmills, al-Busaidi is suggesting that the United States and the rest of the world recognize this reality and negotiate on that basis.

By invoking international law (which bars setting tolls or fees on natural waterways), al-Busaidi is trying to reorient international concerns away from tolls while recognizing what is more important to Iran: the threat of closing the Strait as a guarantee of American fidelity to any ceasefire agreement. If Iran is offered an arrangement, as was implied by the late MOU, where the damage done to it is repaired and it is free to export oil and other goods again, it is overwhelmingly likely that they would forgo tolls in favor of some other arrangement.

This is a pragmatic, realistic path forward. The major obstacle is Donald Trump’s refusal to follow it, fearing his base will see it as a defeat, shattering his image as a “winner.”

But the vision al-Busaidi outlines would lead to a much more stable Gulf region and energy market. The current path leads to a global depression, even an economic collapse and has already committed the world to a food crisis a few months down the road and is about to bring about an unprecedented energy crisis as well. 

The choice seems clear.