United States President Donald Trump has threatened longtime ally Oman with military force if it gets involved in the dispute over shipping access to the Strait of Hormuz, as Washington’s war on Iran once again risks engulfing the Middle East.
Trump’s threat on Wednesday to “blow up” Oman came as Muscat reportedly held talks with Iran about overseeing passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that handles more than 20 percent of the world’s global oil traffic.
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“Nobody is going to control it,” Trump said of the strait during a cabinet meeting in Washington. “It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”
But, while Hormuz is an international strait, most of it is located solely in Iranian and Omani territorial waters – not international waters – with parts of its outlying areas reaching United Arab Emirates (UAE) territorial waters.
Here is what we know.
Who has the right to control the Strait of Hormuz?
As a natural waterway that is the only route for Gulf oil producers to ship exports to the open ocean, the strait has served as a free international maritime route for decades. Following the US-Israeli joint attacks on Iran on February 28, however, Tehran closed the waterway and began to assert sovereignty over it, including charging tolls of as much as $2m per ship at times.
Under international maritime law, countries are not permitted to charge tolls to shipping passing through natural straits such as Hormuz, even where they are not in international waters. Countries can, however, provide services to shippers, such as insurance, maintenance and docking assistance.
Shortly before Trump’s comment on Wednesday, Iran’s state television reported that Iran and the United States were close to agreeing on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under which Tehran and Muscat would jointly control the strait. The proposal designates payments for passing vessels, framed as “fees for services” rather than “tolls”.
While the Trump administration has called the claims of such an MoU “a complete fabrication”, analysts say his threat suggests that an understanding between Iran and Oman is precisely what the US president is trying to avoid.
“What Washington wants to prevent is the normalisation of Iranian control over Hormuz, dressed in administrative and legal clothing and given Arab cover by a US ally,” Muhanad Seloom, non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera.
“Threatening a small ally is also a message to the whole Gulf: Do not give Iran cover.”
Did Trump really threaten Oman?
At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump what he thought of the idea of Oman and Iran overseeing trade through the strategic waterway.
When the US president replied by seemingly threatening to “blow up” the close ally, with which Washington has had relations for more than 200 years, there was initial speculation that he might have misspoken and said “Oman” instead of “Iran”.
However, the US Department of State later shared the comment on social media, with a transcript of the quote that referred to Oman, a country of 5.3 million people.
Oman has not publicly said anything suggesting it intends to join Iran in controlling the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Thursday expressed solidarity with Oman, saying Iran stands in solidarity with Oman after “US officials’ threats”.
Critics called the threat reckless. Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director at the US-based rights group DAWN, likened the US president’s comments to those of a “mafia boss”.
“The UN Charter prohibits the threat of force against any state, and that prohibition binds the United States exactly as it binds everyone else,” Jarrar told Al Jazeera.
“Threatening to ‘blow up’ an Arab country because its waters happen to sit along an oil route Washington wants reopened is the same lawless logic that produced this war in February, and it is the clearest possible signal that any ceasefire this administration brokers will hold only until the next time the president loses his temper at a cabinet meeting.”
Samir Puri, a visiting lecturer in war studies at King’s College in London, said Trump’s threat to Oman was “really surprising” and warned that it would “send shockwaves across the region”.
“Oman has played a skilful regional hand in trying to stay apart from some of the conflicts and offering mediation support,” Puri told Al Jazeera, adding: “I can’t see how bombing Oman would necessarily change Iran’s calculus [on Hormuz].”
How are US-Iran talks progressing?
Trump’s comments come as negotiations for a long-term ceasefire with Iran have stalled, with repeated military flare-ups deepening mistrust between the two sides. Since a temporary ceasefire was announced on April 8, followed by direct talks in Islamabad on April 11 and 12 that collapsed, the two sides have exchanged a volley of proposals and counter-proposals for peace via mediator Pakistan. Meanwhile, Iran has continued to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, while US forces have enforced a corresponding blockade on Iranian ports.
Neither the US nor Iran has announced that the ceasefire has collapsed.
However, military flare-ups continue in the region.
On Thursday, Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported that four ships, one of them a United Kingdom tanker, had turned off their radars and attempted to pass the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responded by firing warning shots.
The IRGC also said it struck a US airbase in response to an early morning attack by US forces on a site near the airport in Iran’s Bandar Abbas. The US described its attacks as “defensive”.
Also on Thursday, the Kuwaiti military said air defences were “confronting hostile missile and drone attacks”. The IRGC did not specify the target of the attack, but reports suggest it was aimed at a US base.
Trump has also recently sought to tie the peace negotiations to a commitment by regional allies, as well as Pakistan, to sign up to the Abraham Accords to normalise ties with Israel, something the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan did during his first term in 2020. Experts say it is highly unlikely that Pakistan or Saudi Arabia would agree to do this without an agreement from Israel for the creation of a Palestinian state, something Israel has refused to do.
What has Oman’s role been in the US-Iran war?
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi was a key mediator in US-Iran nuclear talks before the war on Iran began. Just before the US-Israeli joint attack on Tehran in February, Albusaidi had been meeting US officials, including Vice President JD Vance, to facilitate negotiations about the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme.
During a meeting with Vance in Washington, DC, on February 27, the day before the war on Iran began, Albusaidi said the talks had resulted in “creative and constructive ideas and proposals”, leading to unprecedented progress.
Hours later, however, Trump shockingly announced the US had attacked Iran because “he had a feeling” that Iran would strike first, claiming negotiations over its nuclear programme had stalled. Oman’s foreign minister pushed back on the characterisation that Iran was an “imminent threat” to the US, maintaining that “significant progress” had been made in the nuclear talks.
Unlike other US allies in the Gulf, such as Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE, Oman does not host US forces. It was nevertheless dragged into the conflict when Iran launched a flurry of attacks on US military assets and energy infrastructure across the Gulf region in the early days of the war. The Duqm commercial port, located in Al Wusta governorate in central Oman, was struck by two drones on March 1. A fuel tank at the port was also hit in a drone attack two days later.
At the time, Trump expressed solidarity with the Gulf country, saying: “Iran is hitting countries that had nothing to do with what is going on.”
Why is Oman important for a permanent resolution of the US-Iran war?
Seloom, from the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said Oman is “one Gulf state that is simultaneously a US security partner and Iran’s most trusted Arab interlocutor”.
“In peacetime, that ambiguity is an asset. In wartime, it becomes a liability, which is precisely the inversion now playing out,” he told Al Jazeera.
The analyst argued that joint Iran-Oman control over Hormuz was “more posture than probability”. “Oman’s real interest is not co-owning Iran’s blockade; it is brokering the strait’s reopening,” he said.
Still, according to Seloom, the prospect of Iran and Oman jointly shaping the future of the Strait of Hormuz alarms the US president for three reasons: “It would turn Iran’s grip on the chokepoint into a permanent post-war fact rather than a temporary act of war; it would set a precedent that littoral states [those bordering a large body of water] can metre and monetise an international waterway, eroding the freedom-of-navigation principle the United States underwrites worldwide; and it would hand Tehran a strategic win that outlasts any ceasefire.”
Oman’s relevance on three counts – geographically, diplomatically and strategically – therefore thrusts it to the forefront of the conflict, as its scope evolves into a larger geopolitical struggle for control over one of the world’s most economically critical maritime chokepoints, experts say.
