OMAN'S Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said (pictured on the left) has passed many messages between America and the Islamic Republic of Iran during their 34-year long antipathy. He lobbied the Iranians on behalf of the United States to release detained American journalist Roxana Saberi, and eventually pardon three young hikers who were accused of spying in 2009. He also negotiated the release of both Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan and Mojtaba Atarodi, Iranians whom America had imprisoned for allegedly trying to export to Iran night-vision goggles and high-tech lab equipment, respectively.
It is hardly surprising then that the arrival on August 25th of the 72-year-old sultan for a three-day state visit in the same month as the inauguration of President Hassan Rohani (pictured on the right), a more moderate man than his predecessor, has sparked regional media speculation that he brings with him another message from the Americans.
Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab newspaper, quoted sources in Iran as saying that the trip was "not normal and does not fall under normal protocol".Bahar, a publication linked to Iran’s newly-empowered reformist bloc, reported that the sultan was visiting as a precursor to future talks between America and Iran to negotiate a deal on greater nuclear transparency in exchange for sanctions relief. Fararu, a reformist-leaning website, has suggested that a new back channel might be established between the two countries, to pave the way for discussions over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme as well as the crisis in Syria.
Iran’s foreign-ministry spokesperson at first denied that the sultan would bring word from the US, but the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, subsequently backtracked, saying that he would wait to see what the sultan might convey. Both America and Iran have softened their rhetoric since the election in June of a presidential candidate who campaigned on improving relations with the West. Iranians are demonstrating a rare cautious optimism that a deal, which would bring much-needed sanctions relief, might be at hand this time.
The sultan's trip coincided, meanwhile, with that of Jeffrey Feltman, a former US ambassador to Lebanon, who was visiting as an official of the UN to discuss Syria, and whom the Iranian press described as “the most senior American official to visit Iran since the revolution”. Mr Feltman reportedly trod the line between feeling out for Iranian help over Syria and encouraging calm in the event of an increasingly likely Western intervention against Bashar Assad.
Whatever the speculation over Sultan Qaboos’s trip, he will have had plenty to discuss with his Iranian hosts.
