Internal State Department documents show that in the months of talks leading up to the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. inflated the human rights ranking of Oman in order to reward a close Arab ally for helping broker the historic agreement. According to Reuters, the documents show the State Department overruled its own staff’s assessments of Oman’s forced labor and human trafficking abuses and intervened to boost Oman’s human rights ranking in a congressionally mandated report. This news comes after allegations this summer that the State Department also upgraded Malaysia’s human trafficking rating to ease passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Malaysia, one of 12 countries in the secretive trade pact, was previously given the worst trafficking rating, but a new measure bars the United States from negotiating trade deals with the worst-ranked countries.