After a Gulf Cooperation Council summit — the first since the United States moved to normalize ties with Iran — in Kuwait that began Dec. 9, the bloc's Supreme Council announced that the member states had agreed to establish a joint military command and police force. This announcement comes after Saudi efforts to convert the alliance into a confederation met with resistance. Oman's foreign minister, in an unusually blunt statement, rejected the idea, saying that Muscat would withdraw from the Gulf Cooperation Council if it formed such a political union. Oman's strong public stance against the idea proposed by Saudi King Abdullah two years ago is in keeping with its distinct character as a non-Sunni Arabian Peninsula polity that has existed in one form or another for centuries at the crossroads of Persian, African and Indian civilizations.