Oman: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy
This report describes the relationship between the United States and the Sultanate of Oman, especially with respect to Oman's support of U.S. efforts toward peace in the Middle East, the U.S. free trade agreement with Oman, and Oman's relatively close relations with Iran, the last of which seems incongruous with the other positive aspects of Oman's relationship with the U.S.
Iran-Oman Relations Since the 1970s: A Mutually Beneficial Modus Vivendi
Valeri’s analysis of the Persian Gulf region’s history suggests that the two shores of the Gulf of Oman saw population movements at an early stage. At the birth of Islam, Omani territory was divided between a coastal region under direct Sassanid rule and semi-autonomous Arab tribes in the interior, ruled for the Persians by the local dynasties. Valeri explains the relatively warm Omani-Iranian relations by three factors: (A) Sultan Qaboos’ gratitude for the shah’s (Iran’s) decisive military assistance in the 1970s during the Dhofar war. (B) Muscat’s difficulties to propose a new socioeconomic contract replacing the old patrimonial model based on the clientelist distribution of the rent at home. (C) Qaboos has been less inclined than his GCC counterparts to see in his domestic Shiite minority an Iranian Trojan Horse. Indeed, Shiite groups in Oman have traditionally been invaluable allies of the rulers and have vested interests in maintaining the existing political order.
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.