Trump threatens to bomb Oman
Trump threatened to bomb Oman, the Gulf state that brokered the ceasefire ending the Iran war, over a shipping deal Washington wasn't party to.
Trump threatened on Monday to bomb Oman, escalating from Washington over a shipping deal Muscat struck with Tehran without American involvement, a Trump bomb Oman threat aimed at the Gulf state whose quiet diplomacy produced the ceasefire that ended February’s US-Israeli war on Iran.
“If Oman gets in the way we’ll bomb the s, out of them,” Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst, adding that the United States would “handle Oman very easily.” The bomb threat landed the same day Iran’s foreign ministry confirmed it was finalising a joint declaration with Oman on managing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway the two countries had agreed to administer without American input.
That single coincidence tells you what the threat is actually about. Oman is a country of roughly five million people that has hosted the secret channel between Washington and Tehran for more than a decade, including the talks that produced the 2015 nuclear deal and, this year, five rounds of ceasefire diplomacy split between Muscat and Rome. Its reward for keeping that channel open was to be told by the more powerful party to the peace it brokered that it would be bombed if it kept talking to the other side.
Background: how a 60-day deadline became a bombing threat
The threat fell due on a deadline. Trump’s ceasefire with Iran, agreed on 17 June after a war that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei within hours of the opening US-Israeli strikes, came bundled with a 60-day memorandum of understanding meant to produce a permanent settlement. That window expired without one. Into the gap stepped Iran and Oman, agreeing between themselves that Tehran could charge fees and set navigation terms in its own territorial waters, a claim the US rejects outright. “I’m not going to let them charge,” Trump said. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, was blunt about who had been cut out: Washington was “not a party” to the Hormuz agreement.
Who pays while Washington and Tehran argue
Traffic through the Strait, which carried 34% of the world’s seaborne crude in 2025, has collapsed from roughly 130 ships a day before the war to single figures now. CENTCOM says it has redirected 64 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two since the standoff began. Brent crude rose above $90 a barrel the day Trump made his threat, a 2.7% jump that will reach British pumps long before it reaches a negotiating table.
It will also reach Whitehall. Trump is separately pressing Keir Starmer to send Royal Navy warships into the same waters he is threatening to bomb a mediator over; the government says only that it is “discussing a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region.” No vote, no statement to Parliament, just a prime minister absorbing pressure from a president who has just threatened his own ally’s neighbour with an act of war.
A former US ambassador told CNBC the Oman threat was probably aimed at getting Muscat’s “attention” rather than announcing a war plan, and it is true that no troop movements or orders have followed the words. But Oman’s foreign ministry, led by Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi, has not said a word in public response. That silence is its own kind of answer: a small state that spent a decade building trust between two nuclear-armed rivals now has to work out whether either of them sees it as anything more than a target with better manners.
