No published Omani rule stops an Iranian citizen from entering Oman, registering a company or getting residency through it — the route is the one every non-GCC foreigner takes. What is different is everything around it: Iranian documents cannot be apostilled, any bank account that touches Iran is screened under international sanctions, and since 23 September 2026 Iranian airlines no longer fly to Muscat.
This page describes a situation that has been changing week by week. Since the conflict involving Iran that began on 28 February 2026, flights, banking channels and shipping between Iran and the Gulf have changed several times, most recently in late September 2026.
Everything below was checked on 9 October 2026. Before you book a flight, move money or sign a lease, check the specific point again with the airline, the bank or the authority concerned. When something changes, we update this page and the verification date at the top.
The rules are the same as for any foreigner
Forming a company in Oman as an Iranian follows the standard route: you register through the Oman Business Platform, obtain the licences your activity needs, and once the company exists you apply for an investor or work visa through the Royal Oman Police. Our guides to registering a company on the Oman Business Platform, to activities closed to foreign ownership and to residency through your own company apply to you exactly as written.
We looked for any rule from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MOCIIP) or the Royal Oman Police that treats Iranian nationals differently, and found none. The foreign-investment framework separates GCC investors from everyone else, not one non-GCC nationality from another. What we cannot tell you is whether Iranian applicants go through additional security vetting at the visa stage: no official source says either way, and that is a genuine gap rather than an all-clear.
One difference works in your favour. Iran is not on the Royal Oman Police list of nationalities that must bring a medical certificate for a work visa. That list names eleven countries: India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria and Nepal. You still take the in-Oman medical fitness examination for the resident card like every other expatriate — see our guide to the medical fitness test.
Entering Oman: 14 days without a visa
Iran is in the first group of nationalities the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists as exempt from an entry visa — the unconditional group, alongside the EU states, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and Turkey. The page was last updated on 22 September 2026, well after the conflict began, and Iran is still on it. Nothing on the page applies specifically to Iranian passports.
The conditions are the same for everyone in the group: a passport valid for at least six months, a return ticket, a confirmed hotel reservation, health insurance, and enough money to cover your stay. The stay is 14 days, which cannot be extended or transferred to any type of residence visa. For a founder that last part is the one that matters: the exemption gets you in to set up a company, not to stay. Residency comes only through the visa your company sponsors.
Oman also created a separate free 14-day tourist visa in August 2026 under ROP Decision 109/2026, which can be converted into a longer tourist visa before it expires. The list of nationalities eligible for it has not been published, so nobody can yet tell you whether an Iranian passport qualifies. Our guide to visit visas and the eVisa explains the difference between the two.
The Ministry requires a sum of money sufficient for your stay but publishes no figure for it. Persian-language agency sites quote amounts; we could not trace any of them to an Omani source.
The agreements Oman and Iran have signed
Oman and Iran signed a set of agreements in Muscat on 27 May 2025. Three of them have since been ratified on the Omani side by royal decree:
| Agreement | Omani ratification | Published |
|---|---|---|
| Promotion and reciprocal protection of investments | Royal Decree 63/2025, 2 September 2025 | Official Gazette 1612, 8 September 2025 |
| Framework agreement for joint cooperation | Royal Decree 65/2025, 4 September 2025 | Official Gazette 1612, 8 September 2025 |
| Preferential trade agreement | Royal Decree 71/2025, 8 September 2025 | Official Gazette 1613, 14 September 2025 |
A royal decree ratifies Oman's side only. We found no published date on which the investment agreement or the trade agreement entered into force, which also depends on Iran completing its own approval. None of the 2025 instruments is a visa agreement: visa-free entry for Iranians is Omani policy on the Foreign Ministry's list, not a treaty right. Oman and Iran also have a double tax agreement, which the Tax Authority lists among those in force — see withholding tax in Oman.
Documents: no apostille, so full legalisation
The Hague Apostille Convention has been in force for Oman since 2012, which is why our attestation guide spends time on whether an apostille is enough. For Iranian documents the question does not arise. Iran is not a party to the Convention, so an Iranian degree, marriage certificate, company document or power of attorney cannot be apostilled. It has to go through the full consular chain.
- Have the document issued or certified by the competent Iranian authority, and translated by an official translation office where the next steps require it.
- Have it legalised in Iran — the judiciary's confirmation of the translation, then the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- Have it legalised by the Omani embassy in Tehran.
- Have it attested in Oman by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which since 20 September 2022 is done through Oman Post.
- Get a certified Arabic translation in Oman if the authority receiving the document asks for one.
Steps 3 and 4 are Omani and settled. The detail of steps 1 and 2 comes from legalisation agents and Iranian translation offices, because the Iranian Foreign Ministry's own pages could not be opened from our connection. Treat it as the commonly described sequence and confirm it with your translation office in Iran.
Oman's Electronic Attestation Service lets people in more than 40 countries complete the overseas step without visiting an embassy. Iran is not on its list of countries as at 9 October 2026, so the Tehran step is still done the traditional way.
The Omani embassy in Tehran does not publish its legalisation fee, its processing time, or whether it is currently receiving walk-in requests. It was operating in 2026 — the Foreign Ministry reported on 23 April 2026 that Omani citizens had returned from Iran in coordination with the embassy — but ask before you send originals.
Translation into Arabic
We found no Omani rule that makes Arabic translation a condition of attestation itself, but the authority that receives your document will normally expect a certified Arabic translation by a licensed legal translation office in Oman, kept attached to the original. No source says whether a Persian-to-Arabic translation made by an official translator in Iran is accepted instead. Ask the receiving body before you pay for two translations; our guide to certified translation covers the Omani side.
Banking: no bar on Iranians, but every Iran connection is screened
No Omani law, Central Bank circular or bank policy that we could find says an Iranian passport holder cannot open an account. No Omani bank publishes its policy on Iranian customers either, so anyone who tells you it is easy, or impossible, is not quoting a document. Two Iranian state banks, Bank Melli Iran and Bank Saderat Iran, still appear on the Central Bank of Oman's list of licensed foreign banks, with addresses in Ruwi; whether those branches are operating normally today is not something the list tells you.
National Bank of Oman's sanctions undertaking form lists Iran among the countries it treats as sanctioned, together with Cuba, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Ukraine and Syria. The customer undertakes not to knowingly deal with those countries directly or indirectly — payments to or from them, trade finance, insurance, shipments through them, entities based there, or vessels flagged there.
The bank reserves the right to reject any such transaction or to end the relationship. Note what this does and does not say: it is about an Iran connection in your affairs, not about your nationality. For most Iranian founders the two overlap, because family, suppliers, savings and partners are often in Iran.
Banks apply this because of rules set outside Oman. The Financial Action Task Force, in its statement of 19 June 2026, kept Iran on its list of high-risk jurisdictions subject to countermeasures, including prohibiting new correspondent relationships and limiting business relationships and transactions on a risk basis. United Nations sanctions on Iran were re-imposed on 28 September 2025, and the European Union restored its prohibition on unauthorised fund transfers to and from Iranian persons and banks.
On 24 August 2026 the US Treasury announced new secondary-sanctions measures against Iran covering, among other sectors, aviation and shipping, and warned that any entity facilitating money laundering on Iran's behalf would be removed from the US dollar system. The announcement does not name Oman. Earlier, in April 2026, unnamed US officials told the American press that the Treasury had identified banks in Oman, among other places, as having let Iranian funds pass; no Omani bank was named and we found no Omani response. In May 2026 the US designated one company described as Oman-based for its role in Iranian oil shipping.
Regulators elsewhere have acted against Iranian banks this year: according to reporting at the end of September 2026, Turkey revoked Bank Melli's Istanbul licence and the UAE central bank restricted Bank Melli's branches. We found no equivalent published action in Oman, and no public Central Bank of Oman circular on Iranian customers. That is a statement about what is published, not a guarantee about what banks are doing internally.
- Expect enhanced due diligence: source of funds, source of wealth, and details of anyone in Iran you will pay or be paid by.
- A payment with an Iranian counterparty, Iranian goods or Iranian shipping can be refused even on an account that was opened without difficulty.
- A bank does not have to give a reason for declining an account or ending a relationship.
- The general Omani requirements apply on top — see our guides to the corporate bank account and the personal bank account.
Moving money between Iran and Oman
Oman sets no legal limit on transfers in or out; what stops a payment is compliance, as our guide to moving money explains. The licensed channels are banks and the exchange companies licensed by the Central Bank. We could not find any documented licensed channel that moves money between Oman and Iran, and the sanctions described above explain why.
A US think-tank alleged in August 2026 that Persian-language services in Muscat offer informal swaps of Omani rials for Iranian currency. That is an allegation from an advocacy source, not a finding, and we do not repeat names.
The point for you is different. Oman's anti-money-laundering framework treats unlicensed remittance as a specific threat and penalises it, and your share capital and living money must be traceable to a source a bank will accept. Money that arrived informally is exactly what a bank cannot accept.
Flights and sea links
Iranian flights to Muscat stopped in two stages. Mahan Air suspended its Tehran–Muscat service from 17 September 2026, telling Iranian travel agents that it was acting on a directive from Oman's aviation authorities. Then, on 23 September 2026, Iran's Civil Aviation Organization cancelled the remaining Iranian airlines' flights to Muscat as US secondary sanctions on Iranian aviation took effect; the US Treasury Secretary had said that anyone providing Iranian carriers with fuel, landing services or ticket sales would be cut off from the dollar system.
The Financial Times and Reuters reported that Oman had stopped Iranian airlines from flying to its territory, but no Omani authority has published a decision that we could find. On 5 October 2026 the head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization said Iran had received positive signals about restoring flights to Oman and Azerbaijan, which regional press described as limited exemptions from the US measures; Iranian reports on 8 October still described the Oman route as under negotiation. As at 9 October 2026 we found no scheduled direct passenger flight between Iran and Oman documented as operating: SalamAir suspended its Iran flights in March 2026, and a travel-industry status page reported in September that Oman Air was not serving Iran.
By sea, a Bandar Abbas–Khasab passenger line and a Chabahar–Muscat line have both operated in past years, with interruptions. The United States re-imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports from 14 July 2026, and its August measures cover shipping. We could not confirm that any passenger ferry between Iran and Oman is sailing now. Booking sites still list the routes; that is not evidence of a sailing.
Where the sources disagree
| Question | One version | The other version |
|---|---|---|
| Can Iranians open bank accounts in Oman? | Persian-language agencies say yes; an Iran–Oman joint chamber of commerce statement in 2018 said Iranian accounts in Oman were open and operating. | National Bank of Oman's own form lets it refuse Iran-linked transactions or end the relationship; US officials said in April 2026 that Omani banks were among those used for Iranian funds. |
| Did Oman suspend Iranian flights? | Mahan Air said its Muscat suspension from 17 September followed a directive from Oman's aviation authorities; the Financial Times and Reuters reported that Oman stopped Iranian airlines' flights. | Iran's civil aviation authority presented the 23 September cancellations as Iran's own decision ahead of US sanctions; no Omani authority has published a decision. |
We have not tried to resolve either. On banking, the only primary document is a bank's own form, and it gives the bank discretion rather than setting a rule. On flights, the practical result is the same whichever version is right: no Iranian carrier is flying to Muscat, and talk of resumption so far comes only from the Iranian side.
What nobody can promise you
- That a particular bank will open an account for you or your company — no Omani bank publishes its policy on Iranian customers.
- That your visa application will not get additional vetting — no official source addresses it.
- That you qualify for the free 14-day tourist visa — its nationality list is unpublished.
- A fee or a timeline for legalisation at the Omani embassy in Tehran — none is published.
- A licensed route for moving money between Iran and Oman — none is documented.
- A direct flight or ferry on a given date — none was documented as operating on 9 October 2026.
Do Iranians need a visa to visit Oman?
Can an Iranian citizen register a company and get residency in Oman?
Can Iranians open a bank account in Oman in 2026?
Can I apostille Iranian documents for use in Oman?
Are there direct flights between Iran and Oman now?
Do Iranians need a medical certificate for an Oman work or investor visa?
Our office in Al Ghubra can handle the Omani side of this — company registration, the visa file, attestation through Oman Post and certified translation — and check your Iranian documents before anything is sent. What we cannot do is open a bank account for you or tell you how a bank will decide, for the reasons set out above.