This work proposes a new meta-heuristic method called Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm (AOA) that utilizes the distribution behavior of the main arithmetic operators in mathematics including (Multiplication (M), Division (D), Subtraction (S), and Addition (A)). AOA is mathematically modeled and implemented to perform the optimization processes in a wide range of search spaces. The performance of AOA is checked on twenty-nine benchmark functions and several real-world engineering design problems to showcase its applicability. The analysis of performance, convergence behaviors, and the computational complexity of the proposed AOA have been evaluated by different scenarios. Experimental results show that the AOA provides very promising results in solving challenging optimization problems compared with eleven other well-known optimization algorithms. Source codes of AOA are publicly available at and .