Omani Foreign Minister Iran Persian Gulf Security: Comprehensive System Must Include Iran

Persian Gulf Security System Will Remain Incomplete Without Iran’s Inclusion: Omani Foreign Minister

Shiite News: Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, emphasizing the formation of a comprehensive security system in the Persian Gulf, has said that this system should include all eight coastal countries of the Persian Gulf — namely the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iraq, and Iran — because the negative consequences of excluding Iran from regional security arrangements have to be borne by the entire region.

Speaking at Girton College, Cambridge University, Britain, he said that for nearly half a century Iran has been systematically deprived of playing a role in regional security; rather, it was presented as a threat against which a security system should be formed, and among the priorities imposed by external powers, this was the most harmful priority.

Al Busaidi, rejecting the notion of natural enmity between Iran and Arab countries, said that some differences certainly exist, but Arab and Iranian peoples have lived peacefully around the Persian Gulf for centuries, and Iran — with a population of approximately 93 million, three thousand years of history, and nearly half of the Persian Gulf’s coastline — cannot be ignored.

He said that current regional security arrangements have been overly dependent on external powers, while Iran’s nuclear issue and shipping problems in the Strait of Hormuz are also the result of this unstable situation. According to him, as a result of high-level negotiations between Oman and Iran, a draft interim agreement has been prepared; however, it faces political obstacles.

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The Omani Foreign Minister emphasized that any security system for the Persian Gulf that does not include Iran will be fundamentally unstable and structurally incomplete, and recent events have made clear the heavy cost of the policy based on excluding Iran and the assumption of enmity with it.