Delivering a landmark address at the University of Cambridge during an official diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom on Monday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi laid out a bold new vision for Gulf regional security that would break decades of dependency on outside global powers. His proposal calls for the six core Gulf Cooperation Council member states — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman — alongside Iraq and Iran, to sign a collective, inclusive non-aggression security framework fully owned and administered by regional stakeholders.
Busaidi argued that longstanding gridlock over two of the region’s most intractable disputes, the Iranian nuclear program and maritime security in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, stems directly from external powers dictating the terms of engagement, rather than local states coming together to negotiate mutually acceptable solutions. He pushed back against the decades-long dominant narrative that frames Iran as an inherent existential threat to Gulf Arab states, describing that externally imposed framing as the single most harmful priority forced on the region by outside actors. Busaidi emphasized that the purported fundamental, irreconcilable antagonism between Arab Gulf states and Iran is a completely false perception, noting that Arab and Persian communities have coexisted peacefully across the Gulf for centuries, with only manageable, resolvable differences between them. He stressed that any regional security architecture that excludes Iran is structurally unsound and inherently unstable, with recent cascading crises proving the catastrophic human and economic costs of perpetuating that false narrative of division.
The Omani foreign minister’s high-profile address landed on the same day that a delegation from the Mecca Defence Alliance, comprising senior representatives from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, held closed-door negotiations with top Iranian leadership in Tehran. Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s highest-ranking security official, framed those talks as the opening of a genuine, transformative shift in regional dynamics, noting that U.S. threats had failed to derail independent regional diplomatic efforts. The flurry of shuttle diplomacy comes as regional powers race to mitigate the fallout from the ongoing Israel-U.S. military campaign against Iran, which began on February 28, and growing widespread fears of fresh U.S.-Israeli strikes that could escalate the conflict even further.
The ongoing conflict has already inflicted staggering economic and security harm across the Gulf, according to verified economic data cited in the address. By late March, the war had erased more than $120 billion in combined market capitalization from the Dubai and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges, while more than 18,400 commercial flights to and from the UAE were cancelled, disrupting global travel and supply chains. The persistent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly a third of global seaborne oil trade flows, has sent ripple effects through the entire global economy, driving up energy prices and disrupting industrial output worldwide. Gulf states have also voiced growing public frustration that their longstanding security partnerships with the United States failed to deliver promised protection from Iranian retaliatory strikes targeting U.S. military bases stationed across the region.
Busaidi concluded that the era of unconditionally relying on external security guarantees is no longer viable, urging regional states to move past the habit of shifting blame to outside actors and launch immediate, inclusive new dialogue on the proposed non-aggression pact before external powers impose a new, rigid security order that locks in cycles of dependency and exclusion for generations. He noted that over the long term, regional partnerships with traditional external allies such as the United States should gradually shift away from heavy military commitments toward mutually beneficial economic, trade, and investment collaboration.
Oman calls for Gulf, Iraq and Iran to unite under one security pact
