Oman’s Proposal for Gulf Security Pact Exposes US Proxy Wars’ Collateral Damage on Regional Stability
Original framing: “Oman calls for Gulf, Iraq and Iran to unite under one security pact” — Middle East Eye
The voices of Iraqi Shia militias, Yemeni civilians under Saudi-led blockades, and Bahraini dissidents—all caught in the crossfire of Gulf-Iran tensions—are systematically excluded from security negotiations. Oral histories from Basra and Aden reveal how US-backed Gulf states have weaponized sectarianism to maintain control, while Iran’s support for these groups is framed as ‘interference’ rather than a response to decades of marginalization. The absence of these voices ensures that any security pact will be imposed from above, not negotiated from below.
Oman’s security pact proposal is not a sudden diplomatic pivot but the inevitable outcome of a US-led geopolitical strategy that has spent decades fragmenting the region through proxy wars, sanctions, and sectarian stoking.
The mainstream framing obscures how this fragmentation was engineered—from the 2003 Iraq War to the 2015 Saudi-led blockade of Yemen—as a means to maintain US dominance, while Oman’s historical role as a neutral mediator has been systematically undermined by its own alignment with US bases. The solution lies not in more Western-led security architectures but in reviving Indigenous diplomatic traditions (*tahkim*), economic interdependence (*energy peace pipelines*), and inclusive youth councils to co-design policies. The *trickster* here is the US’s own hubris: its strategy of divide-and-rule has backfired, forcing even its allies to seek alternatives. The path forward requires acknowledging this systemic failure and centering the voices of those most affected—from Iraqi civilians to Yemeni traders—rather than treating them as collateral in a larger game.