US Pressures Oman to Cut Ties With Iran, Threatens Sanctions

The Trump administration has intensified diplomatic pressure on Oman, demanding the Gulf state abandon its decades-long neutrality and sever diplomatic relations with Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday via Middle East Monitor. Washington has reportedly threatened Muscat with sanctions or military strikes if it does not comply — a stark escalation that risks alienating one of the few regional mediators capable of carrying messages between Washington and Tehran.

President Trump framed the ultimatum in characteristically blunt terms. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ‘em up,” he said, according to the Journal’s reporting.

The demands come at a delicate moment. The administration is simultaneously pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran through intermediaries, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling lawmakers Monday that Tehran has shown new willingness to discuss previously off-limits aspects of its nuclear program. Oman has historically served as a quiet conduit for exactly the kind of back-channel diplomacy that such negotiations require.

Intelligence assessments and port concerns

US intelligence agencies have assessed that Oman could join Iran in taxing commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Journal. Both nations share coastline along the strait, the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes under normal conditions. The assessment reportedly contributed to Washington’s view that Muscat’s neutrality has become a strategic liability.

US officials told the Journal they now view Oman’s Iran policy as “actively hostile to US interests” — a characterization that marks a significant departure from the traditional American posture toward Muscat. For decades, Washington treated Oman’s independent foreign policy as a useful diplomatic asset, relying on the sultanate as a back channel to adversaries including Iran.

The friction predates the current conflict. According to the report, tensions began building when the administration concluded that Oman’s foreign minister had provided inaccurate assessments of Iran’s nuclear deal posture, eroding trust between the two governments.

Oman’s response

Omani leadership has denied the allegations underlying Washington’s demands, maintaining that the sultanate’s neutral stance is essential for regional mediation, the report said. Muscat has refused to explicitly denounce Iranian military actions in the Strait of Hormuz — a position that US officials have cited as evidence of hostility but that Oman frames as consistent with the mediating role it has played for decades.

Oman’s neutrality is not new and is not specific to the current crisis. The sultanate maintained diplomatic relations with Iran throughout the Iran-Iraq War, brokered preliminary contacts that led to the 2015 nuclear deal under the Obama administration, and has consistently positioned itself as a diplomatic bridge between Tehran and the West. Threatening that role with sanctions or military action would eliminate one of the few remaining channels for communication with the Iranian regime at a moment when those channels are actively in use.

A contradictory posture

The administration’s pressure on Oman sits uneasily alongside its own diplomatic track with Iran. Trump said Monday that talks with Tehran are “going on continuously,” pushing back against reports that communications had stalled. Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is alive and “increasingly engaging” through intermediaries — the kind of indirect communication that Oman has historically facilitated.

At the same time, the administration sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, over alleged links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, adding another layer to the economic pressure campaign. Rubio told lawmakers that only nuclear concessions would unlock sanctions relief — no relief for Hormuz concessions alone.

The simultaneity of these moves — threatening a mediator while relying on mediation, sanctioning Iranian financial infrastructure while seeking a deal — reflects the administration’s strategy of maximum pressure paired with selective engagement. Whether those two tracks can coexist without one undermining the other is the central tension in Washington’s Gulf policy.

Regional implications

The threat against Oman carries risks beyond the bilateral relationship. Other Gulf states — including the UAE and Qatar, which maintain their own economic ties with Iran — will read the pressure on Muscat as a signal about how far the administration is willing to go to enforce alignment. If Washington is prepared to threaten sanctions or military action against a longstanding security partner over its refusal to sever ties with Tehran, the calculus for every Gulf capital shifts.

The Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis added a commercial dimension to the Hormuz standoff on Monday, saying he would pay the Iranian transit toll to keep his vessels moving through the strait. His willingness to deal directly with Iran’s toll system underscores the limits of Washington’s ability to enforce a blanket isolation of Tehran — and the degree to which commercial actors are making their own accommodations with the regime’s control of the waterway.

The pressure on Oman also intersects with the broader diplomatic landscape around Iran’s leadership transition. Tehran is preparing for a massive state funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei across three cities, a moment of domestic consolidation for the regime that is likely to harden rather than soften its negotiating posture. Threatening Iran’s most reliable diplomatic interlocutor during a period of internal transition adds a variable that the administration may not have fully priced in.

What to watch

The critical question is whether the threats against Oman are a negotiating tactic designed to pressure Muscat into providing intelligence or operational cooperation short of a full diplomatic break, or whether the administration genuinely intends to sanction a Gulf Cooperation Council member state. The former is aggressive but within the bounds of normal diplomatic hardball. The latter would represent a fundamental reordering of US relationships in the Gulf.

The administration is managing escalating tensions with Israel over Lebanon and continued strikes despite ceasefire efforts on the same timeline. Adding a confrontation with Oman to that list stretches an already strained diplomatic apparatus.

Muscat’s next moves will be telling. If Oman quietly increases cooperation on intelligence sharing or sanctions enforcement without a public break with Tehran, the pressure campaign may achieve its operational objectives without the diplomatic costs of a rupture. If Oman digs in, the administration will face a choice between following through on its threats — with all the regional consequences that entails — and backing down.

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For more on the nuclear negotiations, see Rubio says no sanctions relief for Hormuz alone, cites nuclear shift. For the Lebanon dimension of the diplomatic picture, see Trump blasts Netanyahu, blocks Israeli plan to strike Beirut. For Iran’s leadership transition, see Iran plans Khamenei funeral in three cities, expects millions.