Why is Sultan Qaboos cozying up to Benjamin Netanyahu? The answer is in
Washington.
BySteven A. Cook
Foreign Policy
Omani Leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said
addresses the annual session of the Council of Oman in Muscat on
Nov. 12, 2012.
(Mohammed Mahjoud/AFP/Getty Images)
A little more than a week ago, the drumbeat of news
concerning Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was briefly
interrupted by an extraordinary video coming from Oman’s state
news agency. The footage showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu being greeted by and meeting with Sultan Qaboos bin
Said at his palace in Muscat.
Contact between the Israelis and the countries of the Persian
Gulf has taken place for some time, and the Omanis have been
particularly “forward-leaning,” as they say in
Washington—then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visited
Muscat in late 1994, when peace between Israelis and
Palestinians seemed like a real possibility. Even so, the
Omanis requested that the meeting be kept secret until its
conclusion. Shimon Peres, who succeeded Rabin, hosted the Omani
foreign minister in Jerusalem in 1995, and the countries
established trade offices in 1996 that were shuttered after the
outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.
Netanyahu’s visit was different, of course, because there is
no peace process and the sultan even signaled he was willing to
normalize ties with Israel. That goes significantly beyond the
sorts of contact between Israel and other Arab states that has
picked up in recent years amid their confluence of interests
regarding Iran and Islamist extremism. Retired Saudi officials
have been willing to sit on the same stage as their retired
Israeli counterparts, the Emiratis host what is essentially an
Israeli diplomatic outpost in Abu Dhabi under the guise of the
International Renewable Energy Agency, and there are persistent
whispers of regular meetings among Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian,
and Gulf intelligence chiefs. Yet no leader in the Gulf has gone
as far as Qaboos by meeting so publicly with Netanyahu.
Why did Qaboos go so far out on a limb? Essentially, he was
taking out an insurance policy.
Qaboos has often played the role of quiet regional
troubleshooter and exchanger of messages for those who cannot—or
prefer not to—speak to each other. It is now well known that
much of the groundwork between the United States and Iran on the
2015 nuclear agreement was undertaken through an Omani channel.
Over the last year, there was also speculation that U.S.
President Donald Trump’s administration was seeking to use
Muscat’s good offices in Tehran to help bring an end to the
devastating conflict in Yemen. Thus, speculation was rampant
among journalists, analysts, and the Twitterati that the Israeli
prime minister and the Omani sultan were discussing either
Palestinians or Iran. It was probably both—but that was not the
point of the visit, at least for the Omanis.
Ismail Sabri Abdullah, the minister of planning under former
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, once neatly, if crudely,
articulated the logic behind the Egyptian outreach to Israel in
the late 1970s, remarking, “If we wanted a good relationship
with Washington, we needed to spend the night in Tel
Aviv.” Abdullah, an unreconstructed leftist and anti-Zionist,
was either reflecting a boorish and anti-Semitic view that Jews
control U.S. foreign policy or was expressing a cleareyed
calculation that because of the special relationship between the
United States and Israel, Egyptians stood to benefit from coming
to terms with the Israelis. Something similar—without the
boorishness—is at play behind the Israeli leader’s open visit to
Muscat. Even though Oman has been a trusted interlocutor in the
past, there are new political and diplomatic pressures on the
country that a very public visit with the Israelis can help
mitigate or relieve.
The 77-year-old sultan, who took power in a British-backed
coup in 1970, does not look well. He is said to be suffering
from cancer and looked quite frail sitting next to the robust
Netanyahu. Everyone knows he is at the end of his reign, and
with no heir, succession is not entirely clear. Oman’s new
leader—whoever that may be—will need U.S. political and
diplomatic backing when Qaboos dies to bolster the country’s
stability at a critical moment. Under ordinary circumstances
that support would be forthcoming, but given the conflicts and
forces—both internal and external—buffeting the Gulf, there are
no guarantees. Oman’s role in the region as discreet
interlocutor and broker of deals makes Muscat important beyond
its size and resources, but it is also vulnerable. The Omanis
sit between Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
Yemen. If the sultan or his successor cannot maintain the
balance among these countries, Oman may well get sucked into
conflicts its leadership has sought to avoid.
And there seems to be pressure building on Muscat to choose
sides. In particular, because the Omanis have not joined the
Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen, combined with their ties to Iran,
analysts and officials have raised questions whether Muscat is
an enabler of Tehran’s bad behavior rather than a neutral
interlocutor. There have even been accusations that
Oman’s leaders have turned a blind eye to Iranian gunrunning to
the Houthi army in Yemen through Omani territory. If this is
true, the Omanis might be in for trouble. With a Trump
administration made up of Iran hard-liners, including his
national security advisor, the secretaries of state and defense,
and the president himself, Muscat could be in for rougher
treatment from Washington than in the past. Previous presidents
have determined that whatever Oman’s transgressions, preserving
an “Omani channel” was important to policymakers. It is not at
all clear that Trump thinks this way.
In addition, being on the wrong side of one’s more powerful
Gulf Cooperation Council allies is not a great place to be. Even
if the Qataris have managed fairly well since the Saudi-led
blockade began in June 2017, they remain concerned about their
sovereignty given the recklessness of the present Saudi
leadership. Unlike Qatar, Oman has far fewer resources and does
not host one of the largest U.S. military bases outside the
United States.
What better way to relieve some of this mounting pressure
than to host the Israeli prime minister for tea and television
cameras? Qaboos clearly understands some things about the United
States and Israel that Ismail Sabri Abdullah did, though one
would hope in a more sophisticated way. Israel’s supporters in
the United States deeply appreciate Muscat’s outreach with
Jerusalem given the importance they and Israel place on widening
the circle of peace, a diplomatic achievement, as the prospects
for peace with the Palestinians are dim. The same can be said of
Congress, which has worked with successive administrations to
end Israel’s isolation around the world.
The Omanis can expect the Israelis and their friends to repay
the favor in Washington if things get tough for Muscat. After
all, among the most effective voices on behalf of the Egyptians
inside the Beltway is Israel’s ambassador. The Israelis have
also quietly counseled caution on the fate of Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman as the Trump administration wrestles with
the fallout from Khashoggi’s death.
