Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi said on Monday that the Middle East's ability to solve its own problems has been held back by America's 50-year insistence that the Gulf states should view Iran as a security threat, in a major speech at the University of Cambridge designed to break the deadlock over the region's future, The Guardian reported. He called for a non-aggression security pact involving all six Gulf states as well as Iran and Iraq, and said the United States would in future no longer be the primary provider of security.
Source: The Guardian, via World Right Now
The lecture, titled “Inclusive Security in the Gulf,” was delivered at Girton College to more than 100 specially invited diplomats and foreign policy experts, and was broadcast live from 17:30 GMT on the Omani Foreign Ministry's official YouTube channel, the Times of Oman reported. The ministry said a news report summarising the minister's proposals would be published on its website, with the complete text of the speech also made available online.
Source: Arab Hub Post, reporting Times of Oman
The vision matches the framework Albusaidi set out in an article in the French newspaper Le Monde, summarised by Oman's Foreign Ministry: the Gulf security system built since 1979 has rested on the assumption that Iran represented an existential threat to the region and to Western interests — an assumption he described as fundamentally flawed. Despite massive military expenditure and the expansion of United States military bases across the region, that system had failed to establish lasting security or prevent successive wars and crises, and the recent war had shown the policy of containment to be an illusion, he argued.
Source: Oman Foreign Ministry (fm.gov.om)
Any future security architecture must include all eight states bordering the Gulf — the six Gulf Cooperation Council members together with Iran and Iraq — each participating in designing and implementing the new system, he said. One immediate priority is a permanent framework to guarantee freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, whose waters are bordered by Oman and Iran; the two countries, with the international community, should develop practical, sustainable and internationally lawful arrangements to protect passage through the waterway, he said.
Source: Oman Foreign Ministry (fm.gov.om)
Albusaidi said the objective was not to abandon long-standing relationships with international partners, foremost among them the United States, but to rebalance them in line with the strategic realities exposed by the war. He said the greatest threats to Gulf security often stem from decisions taken outside the region, particularly in Tel Aviv, described the war as “a catastrophe” launched without United Nations authorisation, and argued that Gulf security cannot be separated from the north-western Indian Ocean, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea. Oman has historically positioned itself as a neutral mediator in regional disputes, advocating dialogue and inclusive security frameworks.