The Sultanate of Oman has been a strategic ally of the United States since 1980, when it became the first of the Persian Gulf states to sign a formal accord permitting the U.S. military to use its facilities. Oman has hosted U.S. forces during every U.S. military operation in and around the Gulf since then, and it is a partner in U.S. efforts to counter regional terrorism and related threats. Oman's ties to the United States are unlikely to loosen if its ailing leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Sa'id Al Said, leaves the scene in the near term. He underwent cancer treatment abroad for nearly a year during 2014-2015, and appears in public rarely, fueling speculation about succession. Within the region, Oman has tended to avoid joining its Gulf allies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman) in direct intervention in regional conflicts. Oman has publicly joined the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State organization, but it is apparently not participating militarily in those efforts. It refrained from joining a Saudi-led regional counterterrorism coalition announced until one year after that grouping was formed in December 2015. Oman did not join the Saudi-led effort to isolate Qatar in June 2017. Oman has consistently endorsed U.S.-brokered regional peace agreements, and senior Omani officials have sometimes met with Israeli leaders, even when doing so ran counter to the policies of Oman's Gulf state allies. Oman also has historically asserted that engaging Iran is the optimal strategy to reduce the potential threat from that country, and the country maintains close relations with Iran. It was the only GCC state not to downgrade its relations with Iran in connection with a January 2016 Saudi-Iran dispute over the Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric. Oman's ties to Iran have enabled it to broker agreements between the United States and Iran, including the release of U.S. citizens held by Iran as well as U.S.-Iran direct talks that later produced the July 14, 2015, nuclear agreement between Iran and the international community (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA). On the other hand, Iran reportedly has taken advantage of its relationship with Oman to ship weapons across Oman's borders to an Iran ally, the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Prior to the wave of Middle East unrest that began in 2011, the United States consistently praised Sultan Qaboos for gradually opening the political process even in the absence of evident public pressure to do so. The liberalization allowed Omanis a measure of representation, but did not significantly limit Qaboos's role as paramount decisionmaker. The slow pace of political reform-as well as the country's failure to create an adequate number of new jobs-produced protests in several Omani cities for much of 2011, and for two weeks in January 2018. Still, the apparent domestic popularity of Qaboos and government commitments to advance reform and create jobs have helped prevent more sustained unrest. And, Oman has followed policies similar to the other GCC states in increasing press censorship and arresting activist critics of the government who use social media. The periodic unrest over a lack of job opportunities demonstrates that Oman is having difficulty diversifying its economy and coping with the fall in the price of crude oil since mid-2014.Oman's economy and workforce has always been somewhat more diversified than some of the other GCC states, but Oman has only a modest financial cushion to invest in projects that can further diversify its revenue sources. The U.S.-Oman free trade agreement (FTA) was intended to facilitate Oman's access to the large U.S. economy and accelerate Oman's efforts to diversify. Oman receives minimal amounts of U.S. foreign assistance.