Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov flew into Muscat on 10 May, where he met his counterpart Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi and Sultan Haitham Bin Tariq Al-Said. Neither his talks in Oman, nor a preceding visit to Algeria, had been publicised in advance. Bilateral ties and the Ukraine war were at the centre of the discussions, but the prospects for a revived Iran nuclear agreement will have been hard to ignore.