Oman is preserving a diplomatic channel to Tehran, while the UAE is backing a harder regional effort to roll back Iran’s military leverage
Iranian drones struck Oman’s Salalah port. Iranian missiles hit the UAE’s Fujairah terminal. Both neighbors absorbed the attacks in the same weeks of the same war—but responded in opposite directions. The UAE backed a military push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and framed Iran as the central threat, while Oman called Tehran to discuss de-escalation.
This is not a Gulf split. It’s a deliberate division of labor—one shaped by geography more than ideology—where the UAE builds pressure on Iran while Oman preserves a diplomatic off-ramp. “It is important for Gulf states to have this diversity of stances towards Iran in order to have different options—including an off ramp when needed,” Mahdi Ghuloom, a Bahraini researcher and geopolitics fellow at the Observer Research Foundation Middle East in Dubai, told The Media Line.
It is important for Gulf states to have this diversity of stances towards Iran in order to have different options—including an off ramp when needed
Oman sits on the southern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly 20% of global oil liquids flows each day. Every tanker, every container ship, every liquefied natural gas carrier transits waters Oman cannot afford to militarize. Iran has imposed a $2 million transit fee per tanker and is building a ship-by-ship Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vetting system to decide who is permitted to pass through. As a result, traffic through the waterway has plunged by 95% since the war began on Feb. 28.
The UAE sits safely behind the strait. In 2012, Abu Dhabi completed a pipeline linking its onshore oil fields to Fujairah, east of Hormuz, allowing Emirati crude oil to bypass the waterway entirely when needed.
In Oman, the war is unfolding in its own waters. Iranian drones struck fuel storage at Salalah Port, triggering explosions that forced the evacuation of nearby neighborhoods. Duqm was hit twice, its shipyards shuttered for days, and two foreign workers were killed in a strike on an industrial zone in Sohar.
On March 11, the Royal Navy of Oman pulled 20 Thai sailors off the burning bulk carrier Mayuree Naree after it was struck while transiting the strait. Three engineers remained trapped below decks for hours. Omani vessels stayed in the area but did not board. Reboarding the ship, officers told Thai counterparts, would require broader international coordination, because although Oman administers the strait’s southern shore, it has no authority over transit through the waterway itself—passage Iran now controls from the northern side with mines, armed vessels, and a ship-by-ship vetting system.
Gulf states collectively have absorbed more than 4,000 Iranian missile and drone strikes since Feb. 28, with around 30 people killed. US troops have been working from hotels and offices across the Gulf after their bases were repeatedly attacked, with Kuwaiti outposts the worst affected.
The UAE’s air defense systems have intercepted 372 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,826 drones since the war began. On Thursday alone, Iran launched 15 ballistic missiles and 11 drones towards the UAE, with falling debris killing two civilians near Abu Dhabi International Airport. The UAE death toll from the war stands at 11 so far.
Gulf oil exporters have lost an estimated $15 billion in revenues since the war began.
For the UAE, the blow is painful but survivable. Abu Dhabi has a pipeline that routes its oil around the strait entirely, a sovereign wealth fund still making international investments while missiles fall, and a credit rating that Wall Street trusts. Blackstone Inc., a private equity firm and active international investor in the UAE, committed $250 million to a new UAE business venture during the conflict.
For Oman, there is no such cushion. Every barrel it exports, every shipping contract it depends on, every element of its economic development plan runs through the same waterway Iran now controls.
Oman was already the first Gulf state to impose a personal income tax before the war began—a sign that, unlike Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which sit on far larger oil reserves, Muscat had exhausted easier revenue options and entered the crisis with little fiscal room to absorb the shock.
Muscat and Abu Dhabi arrived at this war from different political starting points.
In 2020, the UAE signed the Abraham Accords, embracing deterrence against Iran via US and Israeli ties. That decision came with a defined theory of the region: Iran is the primary threat, deterrence is necessary, and security partnerships with the United States and Israel are the foundation of stability.
When Iranian missiles began hitting Emirati soil, the UAE closed its embassy in Tehran and withdrew all diplomatic staff. Ghuloom said that decision carries its own analytical weight. “Closing the Tehran embassy suggests the UAE is seeing Iran as a threat that diplomacy might not work with as effectively as hoped,” he said.
That assessment hardened further this week. Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “a simple ceasefire isn’t enough,” and that any resolution must address Iran’s nuclear capabilities, missile and drone arsenals, proxy networks, and the Hormuz blockade simultaneously. “We want Iran as a normal neighbor,” Al Otaiba wrote. “It can be reclusive and even unwelcoming, but it can’t attack its neighbors, blockade international waters, or export extremism.”
We want Iran as a normal neighbor. It can be reclusive and even unwelcoming, but it can’t attack its neighbors, blockade international waters, or export extremism
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, carried the same message directly to US Vice President JD Vance.
The UAE endgame stops short of calling for regime change in Tehran—but not by much.
Israel added a new dimension to the Hormuz campaign on Thursday, announcing it had killed Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the IRGC Navy. US and allied officials had identified Tangsiri as the Iranian officer responsible for mining and blockading the strait. The UAE formally joined a 22-country coalition pledging to secure the waterway on March 21, the most concrete military commitment any Gulf state has made.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz described Thursday’s strike as “important for our American partners” in opening the waterway, framing it explicitly as Israel’s contribution to that coalition effort. The coalition’s statement, however, stops short of committing naval vessels—most European signatories have ruled that out while fighting continues—leaving the gap between political commitment and operational capacity unresolved.
Oman never signed the Accords. It has maintained relations with Iran through every crisis that fractured Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) unity, hosted the Houthis’ political office when other Gulf states were arming against them, and brokered the February talks that brought US and Iranian negotiators to the same table.
When Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed those negotiations, he thanked the Omani government by name. Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi has since proposed a regional framework built on nuclear transparency and a non-aggression treaty. No other Gulf foreign minister has publicly put a comparable plan on paper.
Egypt has since entered the space Oman long occupied alone. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told Cairo journalists on Wednesday that Egypt is carrying messages between Washington and Tehran, while declaring absolute solidarity with Gulf states against Iranian aggression.
Cairo has picked a side and is still mediating. The difference between Egypt and Oman is that Egypt has declared a position. Oman has not.
On Tuesday, March 24, al-Busaidi received Luigi Di Maio, the European Union’s special representative for the Gulf, in Muscat. The two discussed de-escalation, international navigation, and the conflict’s impact on energy supplies. That same week, Emirati officials met with US Vice President Vance in Washington.
The divergence in approach did not begin with this war. For 10 years, Oman and the UAE operated on opposite sides of the conflict in Yemen. Abu Dhabi armed local forces along the southern coast and extended its influence from Bab al-Mandab to Hadramaut. Muscat kept channels open to the Houthis and facilitated talks between Riyadh and Tehran. Those roles have now expanded to the Gulf itself. The Houthis have reactivated in the Gulf of Aden. The back channel that might have constrained them ran through Muscat, not Abu Dhabi.
Abdullah Baabood, an Omani scholar and visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge, told The Media Line that the two approaches are operating on different timelines. “The UAE model is delivering short-term maneuverability,” he said, noting that the Omani model is preserving long-term relevance—but not preventing shocks, and that while the UAE looks tactically smart right now, their approach could backfire. “Oman could still prove strategically indispensable when the system returns to negotiation. Four weeks in, it’s too early for a definitive answer,” he added.
Oman now faces pressure from multiple directions at once. Iran is asserting control at sea. Saudi-backed forces are pressing into Yemen’s Mahra governorate along Oman’s western border, territory tied to Muscat’s tribal networks for generations. US combat aircraft are conducting operations in Omani-administered waters on the strait’s southern flank without public acknowledgment from Muscat. Washington used Oman’s facilitation and escalated anyway, a sequence that tests the channel’s credibility from every direction simultaneously.
According to Baabood, the domestic threshold in Oman is not triggered by ideology but by perceived asymmetry. “The moment ordinary Omanis conclude they are paying costs without exercising influence, the calculus shifts,” he said. “That would happen if strikes become repeated rather than symbolic, if economic disruption becomes visible and prolonged, and if the government appears passive rather than strategic.”
Oman’s style is evolutionary, not declaratory. You won’t see a doctrine shift announced—you’ll see it implemented quietly first.
He observed that quiet security coordination may already be increasing, and red lines around territorial integrity may be tightening. “Oman’s style is evolutionary, not declaratory. You won’t see a doctrine shift announced—you’ll see it implemented quietly first.”
Iran is moving to make its chokehold permanent. Tehran is preparing legislation to charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, turning the $2 million per tanker fee from a wartime measure into Iranian law. If Tehran succeeds, the coalition being assembled will not be trying to reopen a blocked strait—it will be trying to undo an Iranian law. GCC Secretary-General Jasem Al Budaiwi responded Thursday that Iran has crossed all red lines and that the fees violate international maritime law.
“Gulf nations,” he added, “will not participate in offensive military operations against Iran to stop the missile and drone attacks on their territory.”
The push to reopen Hormuz by force faces a structural problem its backers have not addressed publicly. Bahrain has circulated a UN Security Council draft resolution authorizing member states to use force to secure transit through Hormuz, including within the territorial waters of littoral states. France has submitted a separate text aimed at de-escalation. Both are moving forward simultaneously. Pressure and diplomacy are no longer sequential. They are parallel instruments deployed by states with different geographies and different theories of what comes next.
Oman maintaining it [the neutrality doctrine] will remain a useful toolkit for the GCC to have at least one Gulf state that can speak to both sides
Wolfgang Pusztai, a former Austrian defense attaché and regional security analyst, told The Media Line that reopening Hormuz by force would require controlling not just the shoreline but the hinterland—at least 15 miles inland, covering nearly all of Hormozgan province. The Iranian coastline along the strait stretches about 400 kilometers—roughly 250 miles—from Bandar-e Lengeh past Bandar Abbas, with its population of nearly 600,000, to Bandar-e-Jask. Securing it would demand tens of thousands of troops and large-scale amphibious operations. Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar have no overland exits at all. The coalition being assembled may be structurally insufficient to achieve what it is promising.
The Gulf’s approach of parallel tracks of pressure and diplomacy endures for now, but Ghuloom noted that not all Gulf countries will maintain a neutrality doctrine going forward. “Oman maintaining it [the neutrality doctrine] will remain a useful toolkit for the GCC to have at least one Gulf state that can speak to both sides,” he concluded.
