Nobody Knows Who'll Be in Charge after Oman's 'Founding Father'

Kevin A. Lees

Politics, Middle East

The sultan has no brothers, no wife, no sons and no clear successor.

In the 1860s, while the United States was fighting a savage civil war, the Omani empire was reaching its zenith. At one point, Oman’s reach stretched from southern Persia, across the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa, to what is today much of Somalia, the Kenyan coast and south to Zanzibar. Muscat, controlled by the Portuguese in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, had become a pivotal Indian Ocean capital.

Muscat’s writ runs far more shallowly today, but the sparsely populated country still punches above its weight in international affairs. Under the thirty-six-year leadership of Qaboos bin Said Al Said, Oman has become a quiet diplomatic power throughout the region, lowering sectarian tensions and brokering discreet contacts among the United States and other regional actors. Omani diplomats, equally at ease in Washington and Tehran, were crucial to bringing together U.S. and Iranian negotiators as early as 2009, paving the way for the early first steps of the landmark nuclear energy deal between Iran’s Islamic Republic and the P5+1 governments inked earlier last year. Presumably with Iran’s encouragement, Oman also last year hosted peace talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels who now control much of Yemen.

A Soft-Power Star on the Edge of Arabia