Iran has exported products worth $174 million to Oman during the first eight months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-November 20, 2020), according to the data released by the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA). The IRICA data indicate that steel and related products accounted for over 35 percent of the exports during the mentioned time span. In January 2020, Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) held the first meeting of its Commodity-Country Desk on trade with Oman presided by Farzad Piltan, the director-general of TPO’s Office of Arabian and African Countries. The meeting was aimed at investigating the ways for increasing exports of constructional materials to Oman and removing the barriers related to transporting these materials to the Arab country, and was participated by the related state-run and private sector officials including representatives of some exporting and marine transport companies.
Despite the U.S. re-imposition of sanctions against Iran, Oman is getting closer to the Islamic Republic both politically and economically. There is also the same approach adopted by Iran, as Iranian companies now prefer to conduct trade with Oman rather than the United Arab Emirates (UAE), given that the UAE is highly complying with the sanctions. Iran is somehow replacing some of its previous strategic trade partners such as UAE with Oman, considering the Sultanate as an economic-trade hub. Over the past two years, there have been many meetings and negotiations between trade and economic officials from the state-run and private sectors of the two sides with the aim of strengthening and expanding bilateral trade ties. During the 18th meeting of the Iran-Oman Joint Economic Committee in Tehran in December 2019, Omani minister of commerce and industry said his country was trying to boost its trade and economic ties with Iran, stressing that this goal could be achieved through more cooperation between the two sides’ private sectors.