Trump threatened Iran. Now Oman. Who is listening?

Dubai: Donald Trump once argued that the quickest way for an American president to lose credibility was to draw a red line and then fail to enforce it.

Nearly six months into the Iran war, the US president risks confronting that test himself.

Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with military action, imposed deadlines and warned of devastating consequences if Tehran failed to meet his demands. Many of those threats have passed without the promised response — even as Iran continues to resist US pressure and the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily restricted.

Now Trump has turned some of his strongest language on Oman, threatening to bomb the Gulf country if it interferes with US efforts in Hormuz.

The warning comes at a particularly sensitive moment. Iran says it is finalising an agreement with Oman on new shipping routes through the strait, while Washington fears any arrangement that strengthens Tehran’s control over one of the world’s most important energy corridors.

But the bigger question is whether repeated threats that are not followed by action are strengthening Trump’s negotiating position — or gradually weakening it.

A growing list of warnings

On July 22, Trump issued one of his clearest threats.

For every Iranian attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, he said, “the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT”.

The UAE subsequently reported attacks on Abu Dhabi National Oil Company vessels that it linked to Iran. Yet there has been no indication that Washington carried out the promised retaliatory strikes against Iranian infrastructure.

It followed a series of earlier deadlines and warnings to Tehran that expired without the threatened military response.

Trump has sometimes pointed to diplomatic progress as the reason for holding back. But negotiations repeatedly failed to produce a lasting settlement.

The pattern matters because deterrence depends not simply on possessing overwhelming military power, but convincing an adversary that there are consequences for crossing a declared line.

Iran appears increasingly willing to test that proposition.

Why Oman matters

Trump’s threats against Oman add another complication.

Muscat has long served as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran, making it particularly important as the US searches for a way out of the Hormuz crisis.

Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence, said threatening Oman could further damage Washington’s standing in the Gulf.

“The Gulf States are actually quite disappointed from the US behaviour during the war itself, and the fact that they didn’t manage to protect them,” Citrinowicz, now a senior fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told CNN.

“So I think those threats are not helping the US posture in the region.”

He believes Trump fears an Iran-Oman shipping agreement could encourage Gulf states to accept a new arrangement in Hormuz and then pressure Washington to lift its maritime blockade.

That leaves Trump facing an uncomfortable choice.

“I think that the administration has only bad options,” Citrinowicz said. “Eventually President Trump will have to decide whether to capitulate or escalate.”

Trump’s own red-line test

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a US Navy veteran, also questioned the wisdom of threatening Oman, describing it as a US security partner and “critical” to negotiations with Iran.

But perhaps the most striking criticism of unenforced threats came years ago — from Trump himself.

He repeatedly attacked Barack Obama for warning Syria against using chemical weapons and then failing to enforce that red line.

In his 2016 Republican convention speech, Trump called Obama’s failure a “humiliation”, arguing that “the whole world knew it meant absolutely nothing”.

Two years later, Trump declared a new principle for American foreign policy.

“The United States no longer makes empty threats,” he said. “When I make promises, I keep them.”

Iran may now be testing whether that principle still holds.

And with Hormuz still restricted, Tehran refusing to capitulate and Oman pursuing its own negotiations with Iran, Trump’s problem is becoming larger than whether he carries out any individual threat.

It is whether America’s adversaries — and its Gulf partners — still believe the next one.