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That sort of capacity to achieve strategic ends short of shooting at each other. If Oman disappears tomorrow,

that capacity to do that is gone as well. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines.

Here are your hosts, Matthew And I'm Jason Fields.

The Sultanate of Amman isn't a country we often hear about in the news, which is strange given its location.

The country sits next to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf from Iran and Pakistan.

Given its relationship and location, Oman is the most important country most people have

never heard of.

Here to help us understand it better, security specialist

Tom Ordenman. Orden spent a year and a half as an anti-terrorist advisor in the Gulf

region during the Arab Spring. His work has appeared in the Small Wars Journal, and he's also been a guest on the International

Spy Museums Podcast and BBC Radio.

So, Tom, what's the first thing people need to understand about Amman, especially those of us who don't know anything about the country?

So the first thing to understand is that there are a number of key things about

Oman that just make it different than its neighbors.

Some of the listeners will know that the Middle East and particularly the Gulf region

was more or less colonized by the United Kingdom for many years and that colonization period kind of ended in a phased withdrawal from what the British called east of Suez after about 1970.

Oman was never a colony in the sense that the other nations were, but there's always been a very intimate relationship between

Oman and the United Kingdom going back at least to the 1700s.

...