With his regiment, he travelled overland from Europe to Arabia and arrived in Oman in the mid-1960s. He was sent there as part of a British military operation to help Sultan Said bin Taimur defeat the Soviet-backed Dhofar Rebellion. He was stationed in the south as an intelligence officer, but was transferred to Muscat. There he became an integral part of the British-aided coup to remove the old Sultan, whose style of rule – which was all but preventing the country's modernisation – was feeding the flames of the Dhofar insurgency that was poised to spread the length of Oman and threaten the Straits of Hormuz, and subsequently much of the West's oil supply.