🇴🇲 Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi called for a non-aggression pact among the six Gulf Arab states, alongside Iran and Iraq, that would end the US role as the region’s primary security provider, speaking at Cambridge University on Monday. Gulf security has “relied for too long on the involvement of external powers,” Albusaidi told an audience of over 100 diplomats and foreign policy specialists, making issues like the Strait of Hormuz “impossible to resolve.” He said “perhaps the most damaging” priority imposed on the region from outside was the exclusion of Iran for nearly 50 years: “Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organized.” In what The Guardian described as an indirect challenge to President Trump’s case for renewed strikes on Iran, amid reports that the US and Israel are considering another round of attacks, Albusaidi reiterated that the US-Iran talks Oman mediated in February were “making significant progress” and that “an agreement was within reach” when the war was launched. “We still stand by that judgement today,” he said. The speech came the same day Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish officials met Iranian leaders in Tehran.