author - oman observer

The significance of this week’s Omani Council of Ministers meeting lies less in the individual decisions announced than in what they may reveal about the next phase of policymaking in the Sultanate...

For most of human history, oceans were seen as barriers. Today, they are increasingly understood as connectors, enablers and strategic assets. They regulate the climate, sustain biodiversity, support...

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton’s warning feels increasingly relevant in an age where unpredictability itself has become a political instrument. What...

Sustainability disclosure is no longer a matter of corporate image or public relations. It is increasingly becoming part of the infrastructure of modern capital markets. Investors today are not...

Many romanticised versions of the emerging world order are now being projected. Yet the reality is more sober. The emerging fracture inside the Western alliance is not a divorce. It is something more...

Watching King Charles III’s speeches at the White House and before Congress, I was reminded of The King’s Speech. The parallel is not exact, but it is revealing. In the film, George VI’s wartime...

Corporate governance is no longer a narrow question of board procedures, formal independence, or disclosure mechanics. Around the world, it is being redefined as part of a larger architecture of...

When this conflict ends, the world will rush to congratulate itself too quickly. There will be familiar statements about restraint, renewed diplomacy and the urgent need for reconstruction. Markets...

The Sultanate of Oman does not suffer from a lack of heritage or cultural assets. It suffers, at times, from lack of structured conversion. If we want our cultural and heritage assets to become...

In an age of fluid alliances and normalised destruction, the burden shifts to responsible states to act together, restore restraint, and bring power back within limits — for no power is omnipotent....

The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed more than Europe’s diplomatic divisions. It has revealed a deeper structural truth: even when Europe refuses to own Washington’s war, it remains bound to its...

The latest military conflict has shaken the Gulf, but it has not broken it. A simplistic argument is now circulating: that the Gulf states relied too heavily on the United States for security, that...

Studying history, civilisations and cultures creates a habit that can feel almost burdensome in moments of crisis: one is rarely allowed the luxury of surprise. Events may shock the conscience, but...

My early love of mathematics, sharpened by engineering and programming careers in my youth, left me with a lasting habit: I tend to read the world through mathematical ideas. Among them, none has...

In the early phases of China’s economic rise, an instinct guided policy that is often overlooked in retrospective admiration: growth was never treated as an end in itself. When regional inequality...

President Trump is routinely described as impulsive. A Sun Tzu yardstick points to something more structured: leverage as doctrine. His method is to identify dependencies, heighten uncertainty, and...

Corporate governance in the Sultanate of Oman is not in crisis. That, paradoxically, is precisely the problem. For more than a decade, governance has been treated as a matter largely settled —...

One of the most promising signals in recent education reforms in the Sultanate of Oman is the decision to bring general education and higher education under a single ministerial vision. This move...

The prevailing temptation in international commentary is to describe the present moment as either a passage toward a new world order or a descent into systemic disorder. Both diagnoses misread the...

Last week’s meeting between His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik and the executive bureaus of the State Council and the Majlis Ash'shura was more than a formal audience. It was a moment of...