Caught in the middle, Oman shrugs off Trump's latest Iran threat

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WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump first threatened to bomb Oman, its officials were stunned and initially wondered whether he misspoke. Trump's renewed threat this week, however, was largely met with exasperation in a country that’s long cultivated a role as the Middle East’s neutral powerbroker.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst in a phone interview Monday. 

Speaking to reporters later that day, Trump added, “I don’t think [Oman] behaved very well, but we’d handle them very easily just like we do others.”

Trump appeared to be referring to parallel talks Oman is holding with Iran over shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried 20% of the world’s oil shipments before its de facto closure. Iran, which seeks to impose tolls on commercial traffic through its preferred northern route, has been firing on vessels transiting the strait using a US Navy-protected corridor that hugs the Omani coast. 

On Monday, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Muscat and Tehran had reached an “understanding” regarding the waterway that sits between them and were working to finalize a joint statement. Some US officials fear the arrangement could involve "service fees" for transit, in effect cementing Iranian leverage over a strait that had remained free to commercial shipping before the war. Oman has denied plans for a joint tolling system. 

Following reports that Oman and Iran had discussed levying fees, Trump in May called on Muscat to “behave … or else we’ll have to blow them up.” His treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warned of sanctions if Oman cooperated with Iran to charge for passage.  

‘We don’t take it seriously’ 

Speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, several current and former Omani officials shrugged off Trump’s latest threat. Some were puzzled, noting Oman has kept the administration apprised of its talks with Iran.

“We are bemused,” said a source in Muscat familiar with the thinking of Omani officials. Trump “is trying to find a scapegoat for the failure of the war. Frankly, we don’t take it seriously.” 

A former Omani diplomat echoed the sentiment. “Muscat is getting used to the fact that these kinds of threats are being heard over and over again,” he said. 

The US-Omani relationship dates back to 1833, when the US signed its first treaty with an Arab Gulf state. The two countries inked a free trade agreement in 2009, and Oman has granted US Navy ships formal access to its Duqm and Salalah ports since 2019. Compared to the region's bigger powers, however, Oman does not enjoy the same defense and economic ties with the United States. During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited every Gulf Cooperation Council country except Oman. 

“Oman is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Anna Jacobs, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute. “They want to always have a good relationship with the US and have worked very closely with it for decades, especially in supporting mediation, but Muscat cannot blindly follow what Washington wants.” 

Often referred to as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” the strategically located Gulf country tends to stay out of regional disputes and often serves as a venue for backchannel talks involving Iran and its Yemeni proxy, the Houthis. Oman's formal ties with Iran were established shortly after Sultan Qaboos bin Said came to power in 1970 and maintained through the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Balancing act wobbles 

That longstanding relationship with the Islamic Republic, however, did not shield Muscat from the current conflict. Omani industrial zones and ports were damaged by Iranian drone and missile attacks over the past six months, though the sultanate was targeted far less than its Gulf neighbors and largely declined to blame Iran. 

Oman's close relationship with Iran is "not an option but a necessity," said Abdullah Baabood, an Omani academic at Waseda University in Japan. “Iran is a neighboring country, an important country, and Iran can wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz."  

Trump’s frustration with Oman has been on display since he used an April primetime address to thank six US partners in the Middle East for their support in the war. Absent from the list was Oman. 

It was a striking omission for a country that’s long served as an intermediary between Iran and the United States. The Obama administration relied on Muscat’s channel with Tehran to conduct nuclear talks that led to the 2015 deal, as did the Biden administration when it sought to revive the pact.

A former US official who dealt closely with the Omanis described them as “reliable messengers” who banked goodwill in the early months of the second Trump administration by facilitating meetings between the Iranians and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. In February, Oman hosted three rounds of indirect US-Iran talks before Trump abandoned the diplomatic track. 

But as the war dragged on, “there was a sense that Oman was too close to the Iranian positions,” the former official said. The Trump administration tapped Pakistan and Qatar as lead mediators to broker the memorandum of understanding that formally expired on Monday. 

The Omani Embassy in Washington did not return a request for comment.

Analysts point to Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi’s decision to give a CBS interview as the moment when US-Oman relations began to sour under the Trump administration. In a last-ditch effort to prevent war, the traditionally camera-avoidant Omani diplomat told "Face the Nation" that he was confident a nuclear deal was “within our reach, if we just allow diplomacy the space it needs to get there.”

Trump went to war the next day. In an essay for "The Economist" a few weeks later, Busaidi wrote that the United States had “lost control of its own foreign policy.”

Trump’s recent threats against are unlikely to cause a major rupture in a partnership that spans some 230 years, but they are testing the limits of Oman’s already difficult balancing act. 

Oman “values its long-term relationship with the United States, but in an era where you have to be with us or against us, that kind of position becomes very difficult to sustain,” Baabood said.