With its neighbor Yemen enmeshed in a bloody civil war that has drawn in other nearby countries, with the regional troublemaker Iran situated just across the narrow Gulf of Oman, and with another neighbor, Saudi Arabia, facing a host of problems, the gulf nation has remained, in Daniel Pipes’s words, “an oasis of calm.” There have been no terror attacks, and not a single Omani has joined Islamic State. Pipes tries to explain this “most surprising country in the Middle East”:

Islam has three main branches: Sunni (about 90 percent of all Muslims), Shiite (about 9 percent), and Ibadi (about 0.2 percent). Oman has the only Ibadi-majority population in the world. Being a tiny minority in the larger Muslim context, rulers of Oman historically kept away from Middle Eastern issues. Part of the country was isolated mountainous desert terrain, part was focused on the seas, especially on India and on East Africa. . . . This unique remoteness from Middle Eastern problems, whether it be the Arab-Israeli conflict or Iranian expansionism, remains in place. . . .

A benevolent dictator, [Oman’s ruler] Sultan Qaboos bin Said dominates the country in ways alien to a Westerner. He serves simultaneously as prime minister and as minister of defense, foreign affairs, and finance, as well as supreme commander of the armed forces and police. . . . The Arab insurgency that began in 2011 reached Oman but, as in the case of most of the monarchies, was easily handled with some extra spending. . . .

As a democrat, I rue absolute monarchies. As a Middle East analyst, however, I acknowledge that monarchies govern far better than the region’s alternatives, mainly ideologues and military officers.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.