It shares borders with Yemen, where a war involving Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — two of its other neighbors — continues to rage, and it has hosted peace talks with Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

It has longstanding ties to Western nations like Britain and the United States, but also with Iran.

Those links have at times made it a useful friend to the United States, such as when it brokered the release of three American hikers jailed in Iran in 2011. A few years later, it hosted covert talks between the United States and Iran that paved the way for an international agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.

Michael Stephens, a research fellow for the Middle East at the Royal United Services Institute, said he expected the new sultan to largely stick with his predecessor’s foreign policy to keep the country safe.

“Oman is in this mixing bowl where they can’t really lean either way because of their historical relationships and their geographic position,” he said. “Oman survives by being quiet, not by being noisy, and I don’t see why he would tear up that playbook.”

The new sultan’s greatest challenges could be at home, where economic stagnation combined with low oil prices have led to large government deficits and rising unemployment among the country’s large youth population.

Sultan Haitham has helped lead efforts to diversify Oman’s economy, though with limited success. Experts see him continuing that effort.

“Sultan Qaboos created a modern economy from scratch. Sultan Haitham will now need to reform that economy in order to ‘right the ship,’” said Elana DeLozier, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.