Up until last week, it would have been unthinkable that a partner and mediating stalwart like Oman would be a target in Washington. Yet, here we are.
President Donald Trump, in a characteristically offhand remark during a cabinet meeting, warned that Oman would “behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up.” The comment was in response to reports that Oman was considering joining Iran in controlling and levying fees on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz . Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent followed up with a threat of “aggressive” sanctions.
Oman, it should be remembered, has hosted U.S. naval port calls for decades. It mediated nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. for years and has maintained nearly two centuries of uninterrupted diplomatic ties with Washington. This history makes the recent turn of events especially surprising.
Iran, which effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S.-Israeli strikes against it on February 28, now wants to reopen it while maintaining sovereign control. Tehran initially spoke of “tolls” for passage to offset damages from the conflict, but by May, after intense international backlash and questions surrounding legality of the move, it reframed the proposal as fees for navigation, security and environmental services.
Tehran has reportedly discussed a joint arrangement with Oman, whose territory (the exclave Musandam governorate north of the United Arab Emirates) borders the strait’s southern flank. Oman however, has not publicly agreed or officially signed onto the idea. According to Bessent, Oman’s ambassador in Washington assured him that there are “no plans for tolling.”
Indeed, the deeper source of American frustration stems from Muscat’s still-cozy ties with Iran against the background of a war that is not going in America’s favor. While other Arab Gulf states issue statements condemning Iran and sign U.N. resolutions against its actions, Oman has maintained silence.
When Iranian drones struck Omani ports, Muscat acknowledged the attacks but stopped short of naming Iran as the culprit. Oman’s head of state, Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, was the only Gulf head of state to congratulate Mojtaba Khamenei on his appointment as Iran's new supreme leader after his father was killed by Israeli airstrikes in the opening blow of the joint U.S. and Israeli campaign against the Islamic Republic.
And of course there’s the stunning essay in The Economist that Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, penned a few weeks into the war. In it, he claimed that the U.S. “lost control of its foreign policy” and framed Iran’s retaliatory moves against Gulf neighbors as “the only rational option available.”
For an administration that sees the world through the lens of “with us or against us,” such language registers as betrayal.
But Oman’s approach has served it well in ways that became apparent during this war. Because of its openness to Iran and refusal to host permanent U.S. bases, it experienced a lower volume of attacks than its neighbors.
Before the war, it mediated five rounds of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran, and just before talks collapsed and strikes began, al-Busaidi flew to Washington personally and went on American television to make one last plea for diplomacy.
The last ditch effort didn’t work, but this record of hosting, shuttling and being willing to tell both sides uncomfortable truths is what makes Oman irreplaceable, not just to the region's diplomatic architecture, but to any serious American effort to end the war.
Washington appears to have reached the opposite conclusion. Multiple U.S. officials told Middle East Eye that frustration with Muscat’s messaging has been growing for months. More recent reporting suggests that the U.S. is applying pressure on Oman to sever its ties with Iran altogether.
Apart from a carefully worded statement from May 29 — a readout of a phone call between Oman's foreign minister and his Iranian counterpart, which emphasized their “commitment to ensuring freedom of navigation in accordance with their sovereign responsibilities” — Muscat has been eerily quiet. Omani officials have not rushed to television studios or to social media platforms to clarify its relationship with Iran.
But this silence reflects pressure Oman faces due to its unique geographic position. The Strait of Hormuz is just 21 miles wide at its narrowest, where Iran’s coastline faces Oman’s Musandam peninsula. Given the proximity, Muscat and Tehran have always had to coordinate on the strait. They are doing so now, and whatever this war’s settlement says about fees or tolls, they will continue to do so in the future.
Iran has already signalled where it wants that coordination to lead. The New York Times reported on May 21 that Tehran had proposed a formal partnership, and that Oman — after initially rejecting the proposal — discussed sharing the revenue generated from fees charged. While Oman’s transportation minister publicly ruled out…
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