When President Trump casually threatened last month to bomb Oman, a longtime American ally, it was so extraordinary that some people assumed he had misspoken. Surely he meant Iran?
Apparently, he did not.
As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran inflames tensions across the Middle East, the sleepy sultanate of Oman has found itself in the cross hairs of the Trump administration and at odds with its Gulf Arab neighbors — perceived by some as too sympathetic to Iran, according to analysts.
“Sometimes standing in the middle is not easy,” said Abdullah Babood, an Omani academic. “For Washington, it is almost that you are either with us or against us — and Oman doesn’t want to do that.”
Oman has facilitated talks between the United States and Iran for years and maintains that it is still playing its traditional role as a neutral mediator, advocating regional stability.
Then last month, it emerged that Oman had discussed partnering with Iran to charge service fees for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz — ignoring the Trump administration’s warnings against this.
The president snapped.
“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” Mr. Trump told reporters on in late May. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”
That threat shocked people across the region. Yet the response from the Omani government, which did not respond to a request for comment, has been silence.
Oman, a peaceful nation perched at the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula — just across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran — has long had a reputation of being somewhat aloof from the rest of the region.
“What they would say to me is, ‘Well, we are the Gulf’s window on Iran, and that’s a function that needs to be respected,’” said Marc Sievers, a former U.S. ambassador to Oman. “And I think it was, to a certain degree.”
The latest war has created even more distance between Oman and its Arab neighbors, which have more adversarial relationships with Iran.
In March, for example, while other Gulf states that host American military bases were getting pummeled by Iranian missiles and drones, Oman’s leader, Sultan Haitham, sent a message of congratulations to Iran’s newly selected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
Such warmth has frustrated some people in other Gulf countries, said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University.
“There is the questioning, has Oman gone rogue?” he said. “It’s not an era of vagueness and murkiness. Everybody needs to be clear on where they stand.”
Unlike other Gulf countries, Oman has largely been spared from Iranian attacks. By virtue of its relative calm and strategic location, it has also found itself in a serendipitous economic position.
The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial global waterway, has been effectively blocked during the war, impeding the ability of fossil fuel-rich Gulf countries to export oil and gas and sending global energy prices skyrocketing. But because Oman has ports on the Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles outside the strait, it can still export oil without impediment.
In the first quarter, when some neighboring countries saw their revenues plunge because they were unable to get oil and gas to customers, Oman recorded a 13 percent increase in government revenue.
For similar reasons, the war has also benefited Oman by increasing its importance as a regional logistics hub. Cargo that used to arrive by sea to the United Arab Emirates is now being routed through more easily accessible Omani ports and trucked overland.
Tawfeeq Al Lawati, an Omani businessman, said in an interview that the crisis presents a “historic opportunity” for his country to leverage its geographic advantages. He called for investment in infrastructure such as energy pipelines and railways “to meet the demands of this critical phase.”
Many Gulf officials and analysts have argued that the war should drive closer regional cooperation, calling for Gulf countries to band together against a shared threat.
Yet Oman’s experience is just one example of how the conflict has often widened fractures between countries.
After a fatal strike on Kuwait’s international airport last week, Oman condemned the attack, though it did not name Iran. Instead, the government expressed its “rejection of all military acts that undermine the region’s security” — a veiled reference to not only Iran, but also to Israel and the United States.
During the first Trump administration, Oman had good relations with Washington, said Mr. Sievers, who was the American ambassador from 2016 until 2019.
When Mr. Trump left office, his family business made a deal to build a Trump-branded luxury real estate project in Oman, entwining interests between the Omani government and Mr. Trump’s relatives in a way that experts said raised ethical concerns.
Those outwardly warm ties started to fray last year, after Israel led a brief war against Iran that U.S. forces joined. That crushed nascent negotiations between the United States and Iran that Oman had been facilitating.
Similarly, in the lead-up to the current war, Oman was once again mediating between the United States and Iran.
It became clear that Oman had a different view of those talks from Mr. Trump in late February, when Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, gave an unusually frank interview to CBS. He argued that a peace deal was “within our reach, if we just allow diplomacy the space it needs to get there.”
Instead, the following day, the United States and Israel started a joint war with Iran, lurching into the current conflict.
On the Omani side, Mr. Al-Saif said, there is likely a sense of frustration and embarrassment that it vigorously tried to prevent war, and then the United States attacked Iran — not once, but twice.
But on the U.S. side, the Omani foreign minister’s remarks ruffled feathers, Mr. Sievers said.
“He depicted the Iranian position as quite reasonable — and I think that made a lot of people in Washington angry,” he said.
Soon after, Mr. al-Busaidi held a meeting with Omani journalists in which he told them that the war lacked legal legitimacy, the Oman Daily newspaper reported.
It was unusual for an Omani official to speak so boldly in public. Yet Mr. al-Busaidi kept going.
In an essay in The Economist in March, he wrote that “America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth” and suggested that the United States has “lost control of its own foreign policy” to Israel’s benefit.
Those arguments earned Oman admiration from some — including Arab human rights activists and leftist academics. But they did not win Oman any good will from the Trump administration.
Oman’s willingness to discuss service fees for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz was “the final straw” that led to Mr. Trump’s threat, Mr. Sievers said.
Asked about tensions with Oman, a White House official did not address the question directly, but said that the president will not allow Iran or other nations to interfere with freedom of navigation in the strait, or introduce tolls. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomacy.
Oman had been discussing the concept of service fees, rather than tolls. Asked if Mr. Trump found that distinction acceptable, the White House official did not answer.
During a briefing with reporters held after Mr. Trump’s threat to bomb Oman, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he had spoken with Oman’s ambassador, who had reassured him that the sultanate was aligned with the United States and had “no plans for tolling the strait.”
“As he said, our countries have had 200 years of good relations,” Mr. Bessent said. “He wants to have another 200 more.”
Turki Al-Balushi contributed reporting from Muscat, Oman.
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