To kick off the week, President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman, a U.S. ally that has been acting as a mediator trying to end the war against Iran.
The next day, Trump posted a map declaring parts of three countries — Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Iran — to be a “NEW U.S. Territory.”
And on Wednesday, Trump declared “ECONOMIC D-DAY” against Iran, warning in a post on Truth Social of dire consequences for any nation that supports Iran.
Trump’s incendiary missives this week were a symptom of growing frustration, analysts said, as the president does not appear to see a way out of the war that he started. Nearly six months after launching attacks on Iran with Israel and 75 days before elections that will determine whether his party retains control of Congress, Trump faces the kind of open-ended conflict he once claimed he would end.
Unable to force Tehran’s surrender and declare the victory he sought, Trump is increasingly lashing out at allies. He also seems worried of a potential side deal between Iran and other Persian Gulf countries that would open the Strait of Hormuz, analysts said.
“He’s in a situation that he can’t get out of — and unlike so many other things that Trump has gotten himself into, he cannot get bailed out,” said Andrew Leber, a Middle East scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Washington-based policy institute.
“This is a problem that neither military force nor bluster can fix,” Leber said. “So when he cannot force Iran to change course, he lashes out at others.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The war has in recent weeks reached a strange stalemate, with U.S. attacks against Iran, and Iranian attacks against U.S. allies in the Gulf, slowing dramatically since last month.
With stocks of U.S. armaments dwindling, Trump for the moment is forgoing military force and instead has focused on punishing Iran economically, which experts say has caused severe financial pain, especially for Iranian civilians, but still failed to elicit the concessions that Trump wants from Iran’s leadership — especially regarding the strait.
Alan Eyre, a former diplomat who served on the U.S. negotiating team that secured the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, compared the Trump administration’s actions to that of a “thrashing mastodon, slowly sinking into a tar pit” during the Ice Age.
The president’s statements this week, Eyre said, are evidence of “frustration that he cannot even achieve the minimal goal of getting traffic in the Strait of Hormuz back to normal levels.”
Monday marked the end of a 60-day truce that failed to bring the peace Trump promised when he signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, which was quickly broken.
That Oman — a tiny nation across the strait from Iran — again finds itself in Trump’s crosshairs illustrates the extent of his disconnect from realities on the ground, analysts said.
Eyre said that Trump appears to be upset that Oman, acting as a mediator, has been negotiating with Tehran on a deal that could give it partial control of the strait, even though Trump explicitly agreed to Oman negotiating control of the waterway in the memorandum of understanding that he signed with Iran in June.
Although much remains uncertain about why Oman became a target of Trump’s rage this week, Eyre said that the frustration probably boils down to one thing. “He is upset with Oman for the same reason he is upset with South Korea,” Eyre said, referring to Trump lambasting South Korea for refusing to join the war efforts. “Neither have solved his problem,” he said.
The map Trump posted on Tuesday, showing a circle around the Strait of Hormuz under a heading that read: “NEW U.S. Territory” prompted widespread consternation.
The post followed earlier claims by Trump that he would declare the waterway to be U.S. property. But the map went further, including territory of Oman, the UAE and Iran.
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, responded to the map with a joke, saying the “gap between America’s inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and its claim to own it is greater than the 7,000-mile distance between Washington and the Strait itself.”
“Welcome to the post-American order in the Persian Gulf,” Rezaei wrote on X. “Some dreams are too far from reality.”
Trump’s threats on Wednesday of new sanctions appeared to up the ante, with the president saying that “Economic Warfare and Isolation” against Iran would be “on an unprecedented scale.”
He added that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”
“Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW,” he said. “You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat.”
The UAE on Tuesday had said that it would cut all trade ties with Iran, which is one of its biggest trading partners.
That announcement came after Trump and Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan spoke by phone.
Edward Fishman, senior fellow and director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump often makes threats like those on Wednesday with little follow-through.
Iran, Fishman noted, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. So Trump’s remaining recourse is to ramp up sanctions on Iran’s partners, including China, the UAE and Turkey, he said.
Other options include targeting banks and refineries buying small amounts of Iranian energy and sanctioning banks that hold Iranian assets overseas.
“It’s not a huge list,” Fishman said. “So there’s really not much else to do unless you’re truly willing to completely threaten the entire world with being cut off from the U.S. economy if they transact with Iran.”
That’s what the text of Trump’s post implied, Fishman said. But he added: “I just don’t believe that’s credible.”
Trump’s rising frustration puts allies in the Persian Gulf — who long sought to avoid the war and have born the brunt of Iranian military aggression — in a tight spot.
Daniel Benaim, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Peninsula affairs in the Biden administration, said he expects countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE to continue a kind of “balancing act” — maintaining close ties with the United States, while scouting possible agreements with Iran.
“They’re trying to create options for themselves so that they aren’t caught flat-footed no matter what happens,” Benaim said.
Gulf states are exploring diplomatic accommodations with Iran, such as an agreement Oman is trying to secure that may include a toll for vessels using the waterway, he said.
At the same time, he added, they are expanding infrastructure to bypass the strait.
Benaim said he would not be surprised if eventually some Gulf states support the Oman deal to manage the strait jointly with Iran and charge cargo vessels a fee.
“With the right fig leaf, they would support it,” he said, acknowledging that such a deal isn’t ideal. “It’s more important,” he added, “to keep the lifelines of their economies open.”
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