Big thanks for a Mideast mediator
A quiet, neutral facilitator of dialogue, Oman played an outsize role in the region’s recent breakthroughs for peace.
Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi addresses a United Nations forum, Sept. 18.
AP
Perhaps no other nation has been thanked so much this year as Oman. The Muslim country at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula has been a behind-the-scenes interlocutor for a prisoner swap between Iran and the United States as well as the release of three Europeans from a Tehran prison. It has facilitated talks that may end the war in Yemen. It helped Egypt and Saudi Arabia renew ties with Iran. And it was essential for Syria’s return to the Arab League.
For a country not seeking credit for its back-channel peacemaking, Oman received big praise from two big players in recent months. U.S. President Joe Biden and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei each thanked Oman for its quiet mediation.
All this gratitude reflects well on the reasons that Oman is a trusted go-between, a sort of Switzerland of the Middle East that leads by listening.
“Our neutrality is not passive. It’s constructive, it’s positive, it’s proactive,” Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi told the news website Al-Monitor. “We really stick to the principle of, how do we create a sustainable environment of peace and security and stability so that our people and our generations can prosper.”
Another one of Oman’s principles is to presume all players in a negotiation operate from integrity and good intentions. Oman has generally avoided boycotts and other ways of excluding countries. Its “toolkit for peace,” as the foreign minister explains, comes from Oman’s centuries of experience in sharing water between its people.
Oman certainly has national interests, such as making sure the conflict in neighboring Yemen does not spill across the border. And like most nations in the Mideast, it needs peace to draw investors and create jobs for its restless youth. Yet its longer perspective relies on the principle of mutual respect between peoples. When rivals in the region need it, Oman provides a neutral place for discreet listening and calm trust-building. Thanks are optional.