Oman

Oman occupies the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, its northern coast flanking the Strait of Hormuz through which roughly 20% of global oil supply passes daily. Under Sultan Qaboos (1970-2020) and his successor Haitham bin Tariq, Oman built its Foreign Policy around studied neutrality: maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran through every round of US sanctions, hosting the secret pre-negotiations that produced the 2015 JCPOA framework, and serving as the primary US-Iran backchannel since at least 1981. Its Ibadi Islamic identity gives it theological distance from both the Sunni-Shia divide and the Iran-Saudi rivalry, making it trusted by Tehran and tolerated by Washington simultaneously. No other Gulf state occupies both positions at once.

Under UNCLOS, Oman's territorial waters cover the southern half of the 33-kilometre strait. That jurisdictional fact became strategically significant in 2026: a passage mechanism administered through Oman sits within a UNCLOS-party state's sovereign jurisdiction, potentially legitimising Iran's contested transit-toll regime under existing international law and stripping CENTCOM's Article 38 transit-passage objections of their foundation. Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi is the channel's operational face; Sultan Haitham is the strategic principal who determines how FAR Muscat bends.

Oman's mediator role came under kinetic and diplomatic pressure in quick succession during the 2026 conflict. Iranian drones struck Salalah port on 19-20 April, injuring one worker and damaging a crane. Sultan Haitham still received Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi in Muscat six days later, holding the channel open through the attack on his own infrastructure. That meeting produced Iran's most significant new diplomatic instrument of the conflict: a draft bilateral transit protocol for Hormuz confirmed by IRNA on 27 April, with a toll-collection mechanism that CENTCOM cannot block from outside Omani sovereign waters.

By late May the architecture faced collapse from the opposite direction. On 28 May, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that Washington would 'aggressively target any actors involved, directly or indirectly, in facilitating tolls for the Strait'. Trump separately threatened to 'blow up' Oman. Muscat backed down within the day; its ambassador assured Washington no toll plan existed. The same week, Pakistan's foreign minister Ishaq Dar met Marco Rubio in Washington and Rubio publicly thanked Pakistan for its mediating role, effectively displacing Oman as the sole active diplomatic channel. The episode marks the first time in the modern era that the US has directly threatened the Oman channel it has relied on since 1981. The oil tanker Olympic Life was struck by an unidentified projectile on 26 May, approximately 60 nautical miles east of Hormuz near Muscat, with no crew injuries and no claimed responsibility.