From ‘Indispensable’ Ally to Target of Annihilation

W hen the United States was looking for a way to talk to Iran about a nuclear deal more than a decade ago, it turned to Oman, asking the country to do something it had quietly done for years: make an impossible conversation possible.

Because Washington and Tehran had no diplomatic relations, the U.S. felt that the most promising back channel to get a conversation started led through Muscat.

Iran was skeptical but willing to sit down with U.S. officials, provided there was some very particular diplomatic choreography.

At Tehran’s request, Oman’s government found a room with multiple doors, so that American and Iranian officials would not be seen entering together.

Omani officials took the head of the table, to create the impression that it was more than a bilateral conversation.

That session laid the groundwork for what ultimately became the 2015 nuclear pact.

“Without Oman, I’m not sure there would be an Iran nuclear deal,” Jake Sullivan, one of the top U.S. officials involved in those talks, told me.

But today, that pact lies in ruins.

President Trump tore it up, then went to war with Iran.

Oman has watched its standing with Washington collapse too.

Earlier this week, Trump threatened to “bomb the shit” out of the sultanate unless it did what America demanded—adding another longtime ally to the list of countries he has threatened to attack.

Oman, located on the southeastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, is often overshadowed by its wealthier, more conspicuous neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and by its more tumultuous neighbor, Yemen .

Yet for decades, Oman punched above its weight diplomatically by serving as one of Washington’s most useful interlocutors in the Middle East, in part because it has maintained relationships with governments that Washington often cannot or will not talk to.

Trump has accused the sultanate of undermining his efforts to strike a deal with Iran and end the war, which began at the end of February and are now in a stalemate .