IN another bizarre turn in the already surreal drama unfolding in the Persian Gulf, United States President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Oman if the sultanate continues to negotiate with Iran over the status of the Strait of Hormuz.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s**t out of them,” Trump reportedly told Fox News in an Aug. 17 phone interview.
He backed up his threat by telling a reporter later: “I don’t think they’ve behaved very well, but we’d handle them very easily, just like we do other things.”
Known for being a staunch US ally, Oman has been talking with Iran about reopening the strait. Iran controls the northern coast of the narrow but strategic waterway, and Oman the southern coast.
Apparently feeling the economic fallout from the almost six months of war between the US and Iran, Omani officials have decided to cut their own deal with Tehran.
That didn’t sit well with Trump, who has been struggling with one frustration after another to find a way out of the labyrinth that is the Gulf conflict.
Bombing an ally is matched only in irrationality by Trump’s announcement in his personal social media post to declare Hormuz as “NEW US territory.”
He also boasted that the US “naval blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated.” That boast is, of course, far removed from reality.
The US leader’s warning to Oman came as a 60-day window for the US to negotiate with Iran closed. He still insists that a peace deal is “very possible,” but that pronouncement doesn’t carry a lot of weight anymore. Trump has declared that an agreement was “close” almost 40 times since April, so nobody’s cheering their heads off.
Trump, however, is conscious of a political deadline that is ticking away. The US will have midterm elections in November, and he needs to prop up his candidates with positive projections about how the Gulf War is going.
Iran, however, is not following the Trumpian script and has not waved “the white flag of surrender.” Far from it, Tehran has raised the ante, saying it is shifting to a “fully offensive” military mode.
As each side hardens its position, the impact of the war continues to ripple across the planet, with the shipping and oil sectors taking the biggest hits.
The annual global gross domestic product has shrunk by $2.2 trillion. The trade disruption from the closure of Hormuz has forced the World Bank to scale down its 2026 global growth forecast to 2.5 percent.
In a worst-case projection, the 2026 Global Peace Index sees losses reaching $3.5 trillion.
The US is also feeling the crunch. The Pentagon has reported that the US military involvement in Iran is costing American taxpayers $37.5 billion.
The attacks on Iranian targets have drained the US’ drone and missile stockpiles, forcing the Pentagon to “cannibalize” its arsenals in Europe and Asia.
The morale and mental health issues gripping the crew of the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln highlight a serious problem affecting American service personnel.
After spending more than 250 consecutive days in the Gulf under highly stressful combat conditions, the ship’s officials reported a surge in severe cases of psychological distress, with several sailors reportedly trying to commit suicide by jumping overboard.
Trump dismissed the Abraham Lincoln incident as “fake news,” and claimed that US carriers have been deployed for “much longer” periods before.
The Lincoln was quietly replaced by another carrier, but the backlash over the effects of its long deployment has not faded away.
As if these problems were not serious enough, Trump now threatens to attack an ally in the Gulf. He has already alienated Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain with his brusque style of diplomacy. Gulf leaders are openly blaming Trump for starting “this war, and we are paying the price.”
Many Gulf states have begun to question the wisdom of hosting American bases and ponder if it is time to initiate their own negotiations with Iran.
We may be seeing the slow collapse of the US-Arab security alliance.
