For decades, Oman has made a virtue of saying nothing that could offend anyone, seeking to stay neutral, useful and safe. Last Thursday, that formula appeared to crack.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said only Tehran-approved routes were valid for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, contradicting a plan Oman had publicly framed as being developed “in line with outcomes and efforts reached by the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran”. The rebuke landed within 24 hours of Oman and the UN’s International Maritime Organisation announcing they had secured guarantees to begin evacuating more than 11,000 stranded seafarers.
The IRGC’s statement warned ships to co-ordinate with Iranian naval authorities through VHF Channel 16 and that “action will be taken against violating vessels”. Up to 600 ships are now weighing how to exit the Gulf with contradictory instructions from two different authorities.
Washington hasn’t been any gentler. Speaking in Manama on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Strait of Hormuz was “a waterway that no country owns” and rejected any attempt to charge vessels using it. US President Donald Trump had already called transit tolls a red line. “It would be unacceptable for me,” he said. His comment appears to have been a pointed shot at Oman’s joint statement with Iran this week, which floated the idea of imposing costs for shipping services in the strait.
Muscat is now absorbing fire from both sides, and that is unfamiliar territory. Its strategy has long rested on preserving freedom of navigation through the strait, maintaining its relationship with Iran and avoiding confrontation with the US and its Gulf allies. It pulled that off for years.
The sultanate’s value as a back channel has been real. Oman has hosted a series of indirect US-Iran nuclear talks since April last year, spanning several rounds of negotiations in Muscat and Rome. However, the trust it built over decades is now being tested in public.
The strait carries more than 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Traffic has been recovering since an April 8 ceasefire. Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that transits jumped 270 per cent to 119 last week after a US-Iran framework agreement partially reopened the waterway, but that’s still less than a fifth of normal volumes. Security consultancy Marisks warned that the immediate risk of closure had “substantially” decreased, but this was not a return to unrestricted navigation.
The IRGC’s move exposed a problem Oman has long navigated around: Iran has been a less unified actor since US-Israeli strikes killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, the opening day of the war. The IRGC is the leading voice against concessions in talks with Washington, and its assertion of control over Hormuz routes challenges arrangements negotiated through civilian channels. Oman had been working with Iranian officials willing to negotiate, but the IRGC is not among those officials.
When Iran announced its so-called Gulf strait authority last month, a body intended to regulate transit and collect fees, Oman was included in the discussions. That inclusion now looks less influential.
Dr Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to President Sheikh Mohamed, on Thursday warned that “new geopolitical facts cannot be imposed on the Arab Gulf states as a result of a treacherous aggression against them”.
Iran launched waves of missile and drone attacks across all six GCC states in response to the US and Israeli strikes. Yet Oman has remained notably more cautious than its GCC neighbours in assigning blame to Tehran. The sultanate has continued to emphasise dialogue and mediation rather than publicly portraying Iran as the aggressor, and that position is becoming harder to hold.
The problem for Muscat is that the Hormuz dispute is becoming increasingly politicised. Iran wants to maintain control of the strait for leverage and monetisation. Washington wants free passage. Gulf Arab states want neither Iranian fees nor Omani cover for them.
Oman’s bet has always been that being useful to everyone buys good relations with everyone. But a day after it said it had helped to arrange a safe, new corridor, Tehran’s brute military force refused to honour it.
The sultanate’s quiet diplomacy has survived difficult moments before. But as competing centres of power in Iran, the US and the Gulf harden their positions, Muscat’s room for manoeuvre appears to be shrinking.
