Dhofar rebellion

The Dhofar rebellion, also known as the Dhofar War, or the 9 June revolution, was a revolution that began in 1965 in the Dhofar region of the Arabian Peninsula against British imperialism and Sultans Said ibn Taimur and Qaboos bin Said of the Al Bu Said dynasty in Oman. The conflict began with the formation of the Dhofar Liberation Front, a Marxist–Leninist group which aimed to create a people's democratic state in the Persian Gulf region. The rebels also held the broader goals of Arab nationalism, which included ending British influence in the region. Sultanic and British goals, on the other hand, were to halt "the spread of communism" as part of the broader Cold War.

The war initially took the form of a low-level insurgency, with guerrilla warfare being used against Anglo-Sultanic forces and the foreign presence in the country. Several factors, such as the British withdrawal from Aden and support from South Yemen and China, brought the rebels increased success, with the communists controlling the entirety of the region by the late 1960s.

The 1970 Omani coup d'état led to the overthrow of Sultan Said bin Taimur by his reformist son Qaboos bin Said, who was backed by a major British military intervention in the conflict. The British initiated a "hearts and minds" campaign to counter the communist rebels and began the process of modernising the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces (SAF) while simultaneously deploying the Special Air Service (SAS) to conduct anti-insurgency operations against the rebels. This approach led to a string of victories against the rebels and was boosted by the Shah of Iran's intervention in the conflict to support the Sultanate of Oman in 1973.