Wednesday 15 / July / 2026
Some articles are read and quickly forgotten. Others transcend the news cycle to become political documents that reveal how states interpret the world around them. The opinion piece by Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, Oman’s Foreign Minister, published in the French newspaper Le Monde on 14 July 2026, belongs to the latter category. Appearing in the aftermath of the military escalation between the United States and Iran—an escalation that Oman worked tirelessly to prevent—it offers far more than a diplomatic commentary. It presents Muscat’s strategic reading of a region standing at a critical crossroads.
The significance of the article lies not only in its timing but also in its tone. Those familiar with Omani diplomacy know that it is traditionally measured, cautious, and deliberately understated. Direct judgments and confrontational language have rarely been its preferred instruments. Yet this time, Muscat spoke with unusual clarity, as if to say that recent events no longer permit diplomatic euphemisms and that the moment has come to call things by their proper names.
The article’s first message is unmistakable: the recent war was not inevitable. Rather, it was the culmination of years of accumulated political failure. Regional crises were allowed to fester, while their root causes were repeatedly postponed or ignored. The international community became adept at managing symptoms instead of addressing the disease itself.
It is in this context that the article describes the long-standing policy of “containment” as an illusion. This is not merely a criticism of a particular strategy; it is an indictment of an entire approach that has shaped international engagement with the Middle East for decades. Containment has failed to deliver lasting stability. Instead, it has preserved unresolved conflicts that erupt with even greater intensity the longer genuine political solutions are delayed. Ignoring legitimate rights while relying excessively on military deterrence has not produced peace; it has merely postponed the next crisis.
On Gulf security, the article advances a fundamentally different vision from that prevailing in many Western capitals. While some continue to equate maritime security with larger naval deployments and expanded military coalitions, Oman argues that genuine security must begin within the region itself. Strategic waterways cannot remain secure if the states that border them are excluded from the regional security architecture.
Here, Oman’s strategic philosophy becomes particularly clear: geography is not a political choice—it is a strategic reality that must be accommodated rather than ignored. Iran will remain on the opposite shore of the Gulf, just as the Gulf Cooperation Council states will remain on theirs. Sustainable security, therefore, cannot be built against one’s neighbors but with them. External military alliances, regardless of their strength, are inherently temporary, shaped by changing interests, elections, and shifting administrations. Geography and history, by contrast, remain constant.
Perhaps the article’s boldest feature is its willingness to identify what it considers the principal source of instability threatening Gulf security. Rather than relying on the conventional diplomatic language of “regional tensions,” it explicitly argues that many of the risks confronting the Gulf originate from decisions made beyond its borders—specifically in Tel Aviv. This is less an ideological position than a strategic assessment. Recent years have repeatedly demonstrated that every expansion of Israeli military confrontation across the region increases the likelihood that the Gulf itself will be drawn into crises not of its own making.
This argument also reflects an important evolution in Omani strategic thinking. For the Gulf states, security is no longer viewed solely through a military lens; it has become an essential prerequisite for sustainable development. Billions of dollars invested in economic diversification, ports, free zones, renewable energy, tourism, and advanced industries can be jeopardized by a single military decision taken hundreds of kilometers away. Such decisions immediately reverberate through energy markets, shipping lanes, insurance costs, investor confidence, and ultimately the stability of the global economy.
For this reason, Muscat’s message extends well beyond the current crisis. It argues that security cannot be imported from abroad, nor can it be imposed through military superiority alone. Lasting stability requires confronting the underlying causes of conflict, ending occupation, and building an inclusive regional security architecture founded on dialogue, mutual respect, and shared interests rather than exclusion and perpetual confrontation.
With remarkable clarity, Oman has declared that the illusion of containment has finally collapsed.
Persisting with the same failed policies while expecting different outcomes will only condemn the Middle East to new cycles of escalation, greater instability, and mounting human and economic costs.
The choice facing the international community is no longer between containment and confrontation. It is between the courage to build a just and inclusive regional order—or the certainty of reliving the same crises under different names.
