Abbas Araghchi, Iran's Foreign Minister, was received by Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman in Muscat on Sunday morning 26 April1. The Muscat stop is the second leg of a three-capital tour Araghchi confirmed to Tasnim late on Saturday 25 April: Islamabad, Muscat and Moscow. Oman is the small Gulf monarchy that has hosted indirect US-Iran talks across multiple administrations since the 2011 backchannel that produced the JCPOA framework.
The meeting carried an unresolved precedent. Six days earlier, on 19-20 April, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps drone-struck Salalah port in Oman's south. Sultan Haitham received Iran's chief diplomat through the strike on his own infrastructure, which is the choice that preserves the only Gulf Arab back-channel both sides currently trust. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi remain outside the live mediation track, leaving the Gulf Cooperation Council split between an active mediator and two states still asking for missile and nuclear guarantees.
The Muscat leg also follows Trump's cancellation of the Witkoff and Kushner Pakistan trip on Saturday 25 April after Araghchi met Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defence Staff Asim Munir but never the US envoys. Pakistan loses its monopoly mediation status earned at the Islamabad rounds; the next plausible venue list now reads Muscat and Moscow alongside Islamabad. The counter-reading is that the Muscat leg is preparation for a US return that Trump's "call us" Truth Social post was meant to provoke.
