Sultan Qaboos Inspired Me
Part I of the Origin Trilogy
March 1st, 2025
So I just landed in Hamburg. It is freezing. My ears are still ringing from the plane. And my head is on fire.
Let me back up.
I just came back from a family vacation in Oman. We do road trips; it has become a family ritual of sorts. It is a thing. My dad has probably driven on 90% of all the roads in Iran, and every time we travel somewhere new, we rent a car and just go. This time it was Oman. We flew into Muscat, rented a car, and drove to Nizwa. We wanted to go to Salalah too, but did not have enough time. Next time, inshallah!
Nizwa was beautiful. Quiet and ancient and warm in that way that makes you slow down. But the thing that cracked my brain open was a museum.
The Oman Across Ages Museum. متحف عُمان عبر الزمان.
If you have not been, go. Seriously. It tells the story of how one country went from being one of the poorest and most isolated nations on the Arabian Peninsula to what it is today. And it happened in a single generation. One man’s vision. Sultan Qaboos. He inherited a country with almost no schools, no hospitals, no infrastructure, and he turned it into this calm, dignified, modern nation that somehow manages to be friends with literally everyone. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the US, everyone. That is not an accident. That is design.
I walked through that museum thinking: this is what vision does. One person with a clear idea and the patience to build it, year by year, brick by brick.
But then something else happened. We were looking at an old map. A beautiful map of the Gulf region. And on it, clear as day, it said: “Arabian Gulf.”
My parents lost it.
If you are Iranian, you know. The Persian Gulf is the Persian Gulf. It has been the Persian Gulf for as long as there has been a Persia. The name is in our blood. My parents’ reaction was instant, emotional, and almost physical. I grew up with the same feeling. I get it.
But here is where it gets interesting.
Later on the trip, we had dinner with an Omani friend. Wonderful guy. The Gulf naming thing came up, and he said, very casually, very naturally: “That is what we learned in school. It is the Arabian Gulf.”
He was not being political. He was not trying to provoke anyone. To him, this was as obvious and natural as the Persian Gulf feels to me. It was his truth, and he held it with the same sincerity that I hold mine.
And something clicked.
Both sides are right. Both sides feel it deeply. And the argument has been going on for decades and will go on for decades more. Nobody is going to win.
I took this photo at the entrance of the Oman Across Ages Museum on Feb 27th, 2025, not knowing what was waiting for me inside!
So what if we stopped fighting about it? What if, instead of arguing forever about a name, we imagined a future where the name did not matter because the nations around that body of water had built something so powerful together that the whole debate became irrelevant?
What if we just called it the Perso-Arabian Gulf and started building?
That thought kept growing on the flight home. By the time I landed in Hamburg this morning, it had turned into something much bigger.
I keep thinking about the Strait of Hormuz. That tiny gap between Iran and Oman, 33 kilometers wide, through which a third of the world’s seaborne oil flows every single day. The most important chokepoint on the planet. A place of conflict, tension, and fear.
But what if it was a bridge? What if instead of a chokepoint, it was a connection? A maglev railway running from Bandar Abbas across to the Musandam Peninsula and down to the UAE. A loop around the entire Gulf. Connecting Iran, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. A Perso-Arabian Ring.
And not just a railway. Shared energy grids. Solar farms in the desert. Tidal energy from the Strait. Mangrove restoration along the coast from Qeshm to Bahrain. Free movement, like the Schengen Zone. A shared currency. A Middle Eastern Union.
I know how this sounds. I can hear it.
But I have been to Chabahar and Bandar Abbas. I have walked on Qeshm and Hormuz and Hengam islands. I have seen Bushehr and the ancient ports. I went to Dubai three years ago and saw the other side of the Gulf, building and building and building. I have seen what these places are. And I cannot stop thinking about what they could become.
Sultan Qaboos took a country with nothing and built something beautiful. What would happen if eight countries decided to do it together?
I do not know what this is yet. A project. A dream. A very long ramble on my website. But something started today. I can feel it.
Cheers,