Trump Threatens To “Blow Up” U.S. Ally

President Donald Trump threatened Oman, a longtime U.S. ally, during a White House Cabinet meeting on May 27, saying the country would have to "behave" over a reported Strait of Hormuz arrangement with Iran — or face U.S. military force.

The comment came after a reporter asked whether Trump would accept a short-term deal allowing Iran and Oman to jointly manage the strategic waterway. Trump rejected the idea outright: "Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we'll have to blow them up. They understand that. They'll be fine."

The threat drew immediate scrutiny — directed at a U.S. partner of decades and carrying clear implications for ongoing Iran negotiations. The State Department then reposted a captioned video of the exchange from its official X account — a significant escalation, since State Department communications are treated by foreign governments as authoritative statements of U.S. policy, eliminating any deniability that the remark was merely off-the-cuff.

CNN noted that Oman is now at least the 15th country Trump has threatened, attacked, or left open the possibility of attacking across his two terms — nearly all of them in the first 16 months of his second term. He has launched strikes in seven countries this term alone — Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen — and threatened or left open the possibility of strikes against seven others, including Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, and now Oman.

Fox News anchor John Roberts called Trump "the first American president that I know of to ever threaten to take military action against Oman."

The Strait of Hormuz has been all but closed since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28. The two sides agreed to a cease-fire in early April, but progress toward a broader deal has been uneven. At the same Cabinet meeting, Trump warned he might walk away from a peace deal with Iran unless Arab countries join the Abraham Accords, saying: "I think they owe that to us, to be honest," and adding, "I'm not sure we should make the deal if they don't sign."

Human rights group DAWN's advocacy director Raed Jarrar put the threat in stark legal terms, telling Al Jazeera: "The UN Charter prohibits the threat of force against any state, and that prohibition binds the United States exactly as it binds everyone else." He added that threatening to "blow up" an Arab country "because its waters happen to sit along an oil route Washington wants reopened is the same lawless logic that produced this war in February."

The threat carried an added complication: Trump's organization is currently building Trump International Oman, a $500 million luxury hotel, golf course, and resort development near Muscat. Commentators were quick to note the president had just threatened the same country where his brand has a major project underway.

Many observers initially assumed Trump couldn't possibly have meant what he appeared to say — until the State Department's repost settled the matter. Eurasia Group senior analyst Gregory Brew, one of the leading Western experts on Iran, posted simply: "Okay, so he did mean Oman, then."

Wall Street Journal reporter Laurence Norman focused on the room itself: "Rubio's head movement when Trump threatens to blow up Oman is something for a slow-motion GIF."

Oman had also served as a key mediator between Washington and Tehran before the war began — a role Trump's remark now directly complicates.