Oman's foreign minister says 'containing Iran' was a false narrative to militarise the Persian Gulf

Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi said that the decade-long narrative of “containing” Iran was a falsehood and the Iran threat was used to militarise the region. He argued in a newly published op-ed that there is a fundamental need to overhaul the security architecture of the Persian Gulf. Albusaidi published this op-ed in the French newspaper Le Monde, where he sharply criticised the ongoing conflict in the region, calling it a “disaster” and lacking a United Nations mandate and failing to achieve its objectives.

The false narrative of existential threat from Iran has resulted in an unchecked increase in regional defence spending, expansion of US military bases in the Gulf, and a heavy reliance on long-range, forward-deployed military presence. He argued that all this came at immense financial cost; in fact, Iran was never really an existential threat. He argued that real threat originated from outside the Persian Gulf, the result of decisions and action taken by Israel.

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He urged that any security framework in the region must be inclusivbe and include all eight countries, the six members of the the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) alongside Iraq and Iran, which had historcially been part of containment policies and foreign military interventions. He specifically highlighted the security of the vital trade route Strait of Hormuz, towards which both Iran and Oman has special responsibility to the international community.

His comments comes in the backdrop of the escalating war in the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed. Both Iran and the US are calling themself “Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz”. Both sought to charge a fee for safeguarding it.

However, he did not argue about abandoning ties with the United States, instead recaliberating them with the eveolving strategic realities since the conflcit. He said that these conflict has dealt a major blow to the myth of containment in the Persian Gulf. He seemed optimistic about the scope of building a fairer, more realistic, and more effective security order to correct the nearly half a century old strategic blunder.