Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi wrote in the French-language news outlet Le Monde on Tuesday that the recent US-Israeli aggression on Iran had exposed the collapse of the decades-old policy of containing Tehran, arguing that the principal threat to Gulf security originates not from Iran but from decisions made in Tel Aviv.
Writing on the lessons of the war on Iran and its spillover, al-Busaidi wrote that nearly half a century of security policies built around isolating Iran had failed to deliver stability, while the latest war had demonstrated the need for a fundamentally different regional security framework based on including the Islamic Republic rather than confronting it.
Rejecting the premise that Iran constitutes the primary danger to Gulf states, al-Busaidi argued that a flawed strategic assumption has long shaped regional security.
"Since 1979, Gulf security has been organized around what was known as 'containment'", Al-Busaidi wrote.
He said the doctrine was built on the belief that Iran represented an existential threat to both the Gulf and Western interests. "However, this premise was fundamentally flawed. Tehran did not constitute an existential threat", he said.
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Instead, al-Busaidi asserted that the recent war had demonstrated a different reality. "The most serious threats to the security of the Gulf do not originate from the region itself, but from decisions made outside of it, primarily in Tel Aviv", the Omani foreign minister said.
He added that this conclusion had become "largely undeniable," calling for Gulf states to draw lessons from the conflict and rethink the foundations of regional security.
According to al-Busaidi, the Gulf's confrontation with Iran revealed that decades of military expansion and external intervention had failed to produce genuine security.
He pointed to massive military spending, the expansion of US military bases across the Gulf, and the continued deployment of foreign forces as policies that came at enormous financial cost without delivering lasting stability.
"The war against Iran has revealed how much of a myth the policy of containment was", the Omani foreign minister wrote.
He added that even many who had previously defended the strategy now recognize that more than four decades of containment failed to achieve its stated objectives.
Al-Busaidi argued that any future Gulf security architecture must include all eight littoral states bordering the Gulf, including Iran and Iraq, rather than excluding countries through military or political containment.
He said Oman, alongside Iran, bears particular responsibility for safeguarding navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, stressing that freedom of navigation should be protected through cooperation rooted in international law.
According to al-Busaidi, Gulf security should be built on dialogue among regional states while reassessing partnerships with external powers to better reflect what he described as the strategic realities exposed by the war.
While emphasizing that existing alliances need not be abandoned, he argued they should be recalibrated to support regional stability rather than perpetuate confrontation.