When he died last Friday, Qaboos bin Said al-Said was the longest-ruling head of state in the Arab world, having seized power in Oman from his father in 1970. Omanis are overwhelmingly Ibadi Muslims, neither Shiite nor Sunni, which positioned Qaboos to act frequently as an intermediary between Iran and its Sunni rivals. But he was also the among the first Arab leaders to make peaceful overtures to the Jewish state, as Yoel Guzansky and Efraim Halevy write—although full diplomatic relations do not yet exist between the two countries:

After Qaboos came to power, the British initiated ties between Israel and Oman, which at the time was dealing with an invasion from Yemen. . . . British and Iranian aid (during the shah’s rule, prior to the Islamic Revolution) was supplemented by Israeli military and political advice, as well as Israeli help in providing solutions to the water shortage in the sultanate.

After some twenty years of secret and sensitive relations between Oman and Israel, there was a positive shift in the ties between the two countries following the signing of the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan. That same year, Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin, who wanted to infuse a regional dimension to the historic agreement, arrived in Muscat on a direct flight from Tel Aviv. . . . Oman was the first of the Gulf states to approve the establishment of an Israeli diplomatic mission.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conducted an official visit to Muscat in 2018 and according to reports flew over Saudi airspace en route. The Palestinian question was raised during talks between Netanyahu and Sultan Qaboos, but the Omani host did not pressure Israel on the matter. Questioned by a Palestinian representative at an event following Netanyahu’s visit, an Omani spokesman said that given that for 70 years the Palestinians had not been able to advance their claims against Israel, they would do well to seek new and different formulas that were in line with the spirit of the time.

As for Haitham bin Tariq al-Said, Qaboos’s cousin and handpicked successor, Guzansky and Halevy believe that he is “likely . . . to maintain close ties with Iran on the one hand and with Israel on the other.”

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.