U.S. IS SAID TO DEVELOP OMAN AS IT'S MAJOR ALLY IN THE GULF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300025-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: March 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

1.I I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300025-0 -
STAT
NEW YORK TIMES
25 March, 1985
U.S. Is Said to Develop Oman
As Its Major Ally in the Gulf
The following article is based on reporting by Jeff Gerth and Judith Miller
and was written by Miss Miller.
CAIRO, March 24 ? In the six years
since the Iranian revolution, the strate-
gically placed and isolated nation of
Oman has emerged as Washington's1
most reliable ally in the Persian Gulf,
according to Western, Omani and other
Arab officials.
This development, the officials said, ,
has resulted largely from the influence
of about 20 American, British and Arab
advisers to the country's reclusive and
absolute ruler, Sultan Qabus bin Said.
The advisers, many of whom have in-
telligence backgrounds, have helpedj
shape Oman's domestic and foreign !
policies ? often to the benefit of their i
own country's interests, the officials
said.
Among those interviewed in Oman
during an eight-day visit there late last
year were some of the foreign advisers
to the Sultan, although several declined
to speak on the record. The Sultan de-
clined a request for an interview.
The location of Oman, the second
largest and least densely populated
couriii? n the Persian Gulf, dictates its
strategic value to the West: It controls
the 24-mile wide Strait of Hormuz,
through which a significant amount of
the West's oil flows, though the amount
has lessened in recent years.
Oman agreed to the relationship with
the United States for a variety of rea-
sons; Omani officials said. Many Oma-
ins, They said, favored a relationship
with the United States to reduce British
influence in the country.
The advisers have encouraged Sultan
Gahm to give Western strategists ac:i
cess to Omani installations that otizi-
Arab nations inclu *Saudi Arabia
and Egypt. have been unwilling to pro-
vide. the officials said. As a result, they
said. Oman has become a base for
Western intelligence operations, mili-
tary maneuvers and logistical prepara-
tions for any defense of the oil-produc-
ing Persian Gulf.
On Thursday the Reagan Adminis-
tration engaged in a rare public discus-
sion of Oman's growing strategic value
to. the United States. In testimony be-
fore a Congressional subcommittee,
Maj. Gen. David Watts, director of
Logistics and Security Assistance for
the Central Command, said the United
States had nearly finished building and
modernizing sites in Oman and two Af-
rican nations ? Somalia and Kenya ?
for use by a rapid deployment force in
the event of a crisis in the Gulf.
The new installations would "support
tactical air operations, MAC opera-
tions and pre-positioning of air force
war readiness material assets," the ,
Army general said. MAC stands for
Military Airlift Command. I
American and other Western and :
Arab officials discussed developments
in Oman in interviews in Washington
as well as in Britain and various Mid-
die Eastern countries, including Oman.:
Britain Exercised
?
Mijor Role in Past-
K.O.dern Oman, they said, is in large.
part a creation of the British, the first
to sense its strategic potential.
The British helped the Sultan over
thro:w his father in a coup in 1970, ac,-,
cording to some officials involved in its
planning, although the report has been
denied by the British Government. In
the -mid-1970's, the Sultan had British
assistance in quelling an insurgency,
backed by Southern Yemen, in the
southern province of Dhofar:
In addition, Omani officials said,
Oman has been more- concerned with
what it sees as the Soviet threat to the
Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean than
with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The perception, Omani officials said,
has spurred them to seek foreign mili-
tary support, as has Ayatollah Ruhol- '
lah Khomeini's stated intention to ex-
port his Islamic revolution from Iran to
other countries in the region.
Since the Iranian revolution in 1979,
some advisers to the Sultan said, both
Britain and the United States have
tried to assume a low profile in Oman
? to avoid, they said, creating the kind
of foreign presence in Oman that ulti-
mately proved so destabilizing in Iran.
Several advisers to the Sultan noted
that the two countries are very differ-
ent. Many Omanis, they said, havei
benefited from the development of the
country under foreign tutelage, and
most are members of a small Moslem
sect called Ibadhi that lacks the politi-
cally radical tradition of Shiism, the
sect of Islam dominant in Iran.
Agreement Gives U.S.
MilitaryStaging Points
?
Although the British were instrumen-
tal in opening the country to Western
influence and modernization in the
1970's, Oman's isolation in the last five
years has been actively encouraged by
the advisers, Omani officials and some
of the Western advisers said. The Brit-
ish and American advisers said they
believed that Oron's Inaccpssibility
facilitated United StateSlinditritich.
te Irni in e
country.
Under an agreement with the United
States, Oman provides staging points
for the United States at military instal-
lations at Masira Island, Sib and
Thumrait, and on the Masandam
Peninsula near the Strait of Hormuz,
Western officials said. The installa-
tions, they said, could be critical to any
defense of the Gulf. '
Because only the strait separates it
from lran, the Masandam Pensinsula
has provided a useful listenmg_post for
monitoring the Ayatollah's revolution-
ary Government. accoramg to w estern
and viewed
rr
intelpgence sources inte
view in Washington and the Middle
East
The United. Suites used Oman to
stage the unsuccessful mitsion to res-
cue the American hostages in Iran in
1980. Last December, according to
Western and Arab officials in Washing-
ton- and the Middle East, the United
States had a team of commandos se-
cretly positioned in Oman to monitor
the situation during the hijacking of a
Kuwaiti plane to Teheran in which two
I Americans were killed. The Omanis
have denied the reports.
"Oman has become what we had
, hoped Egypt might be," a senior Amer-
, ican* military official said recently.
? "We could never secure the kinds of
access in Saudi Arabia that we have ne-
, gotilted in Oman," a State Depart-
ment official said.
Ccritinded
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302300025-0