Trump threatens Oman, claims Hormuz and secretly talks to IRGC

President Trump threatened to blow up Oman, declared Hormuz a US territory and confirmed a direct Washington backchannel to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps within 48 hours.

WEBDESK – MEDIABITES NEWS – IMRAN MALIK

In what may be the most extraordinary 48 hours of American Middle East diplomacy in recent memory, President Donald Trump threatened to blow up a US ally, claimed ownership of one of the world’s most critical waterways, and simultaneously confirmed that Washington has opened a secret direct channel to the very Iranian military organisation America has been bombing throughout the conflict.

This is, apparently, a strategy.

Threatening Oman — A US Ally of Decades
The most startling revelation came from a cabinet meeting in May, details of which have only now emerged publicly. During what was described as a casual aside, Trump threatened to “blow up” Oman if the Gulf nation failed to “behave.”

Oman is not an adversary. It is one of America’s most strategically valuable and diplomatically useful allies in the entire Middle East, with decades of military and economic ties with the United States. It is also a nation of 5.3 million people that has served as the primary backchannel host for US-Iran communications for years, including the secret negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal.

During the current conflict, Oman has played a critical mediation role while simultaneously coming under Iranian attack itself, a fact that makes Trump’s threat to blow it up particularly remarkable in its diplomatic logic.

Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday that talks with Oman were “continuing in earnest” despite Trump’s outburst, suggesting that Muscat’s patience with Washington’s erratic communication style remains, for now, intact.

Claiming the Strait of Hormuz as American Territory
Trump’s Oman threat was accompanied by an equally extraordinary declaration during a speech on Friday. The President announced his intention to declare the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.”

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under the sovereign coastal jurisdiction of Iran to the north and Oman to the south. Under international maritime law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the strait is subject to the right of transit passage for all nations and cannot be unilaterally claimed as the territory of a third country regardless of naval presence.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded to the territorial claim with characteristic directness earlier this week, saying the Strait of Hormuz “cannot be seized with a tweet.”

He was, by any reasonable reading of international maritime law, correct.

The IRGC Backchannel — Washington Talks to Tehran’s Military
Perhaps the most substantively significant development in Trump’s latest round of Middle East statements was his confirmation that Washington has opened a direct backchannel to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.

The IRGC is the Iranian military organisation that the United States and Israel have been targeting throughout the conflict. It has been designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by Washington. American and Israeli strikes have specifically targeted its commanders, infrastructure, and operational capacity.

And Trump has now confirmed that Washington is talking to them directly.

“They’re good poker players, but they’re dying,” Trump said of the IRGC leadership, combining a backhanded diplomatic compliment with a statement of military confidence in the same breath.

The confirmation of a direct IRGC backchannel is diplomatically significant regardless of how it was delivered. It suggests that the path to any eventual US-Iran settlement runs not just through diplomatic ministries and presidential offices but through the Revolutionary Guard itself, which has been the primary military actor throughout the conflict.

What This All Means
Taken together, Trump’s latest statements present a picture of American Middle East engagement that defies conventional diplomatic categorisation.

Washington is threatening its most reliable Gulf mediator. It is claiming legal ownership of a waterway it does not own. It is simultaneously bombing and directly communicating with the Iranian military organisation at the centre of the conflict. And it is doing all of this while oil markets watch nervously, Hormuz shipping remains constrained, and the 60-day ceasefire framework has already expired without a settlement.

Oman, to its considerable credit, is continuing to mediate. Iran is continuing to negotiate. And the Strait of Hormuz, for now, remains neither American territory nor fully open.

The poker game, as Trump himself described it, continues. The stakes are approximately 20% of the world’s daily oil supply.