Trump’s Latest War Threat Just Put A Key US Navy Lifeline At Risk

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Right, so Donald Trump’s latest brilliant idea is to threaten to bomb Oman. Because nothing says ‘diplomatic mastermind’ quite like intimidating the one country still willing to drive your getaway car.
Oman.

You know, the country America calls whenever it needs a Middle Eastern messenger, a neutral spot for awkward breakups, or just a handy parking spot for its floating metal hardware.

And yet that is the country Trump has decided needs threatening this week.
Well, there we are.

The tiny flaw in Trump’s latest scheme however, is that Oman is one of the last remaining ways out from his Iran war disaster, the one that has ships with crew no jumping overboard, and that he’s blown just about every offensive and defensive long range missile the US had to hand.

It sits on the southern side of the Strait of Hormuz, across from Iran, and Trump’s own agreement gave both coastal states a role in managing traffic through it. Oman has also spent years carrying messages and hosting talks between Washington and Tehran when they couldn’t or wouldn’t speak directly.

It is a US security partner as well as being on speaking terms with Iran, with ports that have supported American naval operations, so it’s a handy state to be friends with in the Middle East all in all.

So Trump isn’t just picking a fight with another government here in which case. He’s managed to threaten the mediator, one half of the Strait of Hormuz’s coastline, when Iran’s is very much off limits to the US right now, and the Navy’s favourite pit stop as it is, all at once.

He’s basically pointed at his own Achilles’ cankles and painted a big fat target on them.
That was of course the much vaunted Iran deal signing back in June.

A great deal. A beautiful deal. But why is it relevant now?

Well it was a 60 day deadline to be enacted and the deadline has now passed without the final agreement Trump was selling there as basically a sure thing.

No final deal. Shipping still jammed. Fuel hovering at $4 a gallon. The Navy stretched thinner than Trump’s patience. And now, a bombing threat aimed at one of the few states he hadn’t yet alienated.

Bravo, Donald. Truly, a diplomatic Picasso, if Picasso only painted with crayons and anger.

We have been here before with the mush-brained orange muppet though, haven’t we?

Trump says the deal is close. Trump says the papers are ready. Trump says everybody is delighted. Trump says the markets are cheering. Trump says the Strait will open. Trump says a lot of things.

Then you go digging for the actual result and all you find is a memo, a timetable, and an invitation to keep twiddling your thumbs until further notice.

The memorandum opened a 60-day window for the two sides to negotiate the real trade-off: Washington wanted concessions over Iran’s nuclear programme, while Tehran wanted sanctions relief.

That window has now closed without those final terms, or an agreed extension, or the settlement Trump claimed was basically done. Iran says US violations derailed the process before proper talks could begin, a hard point to argue against. Washington blames Tehran for not delivering, because of course they do.

So the document Trump paraded as a finished deal was really just an agreement to keep arguing. Even that has now collapsed in the sand.

Iran says Washington violated the memorandum. Washington says Iran failed to meet its obligations. There are arguments over what the deadline meant and whether it could be extended.

But none of that saves Trump’s claim that “the deal is all signed”.

“All signed” shouldn’t mean “come back in two months and we’ll see whether anybody has agreed to it yet”.

That sort of misses the entire point of signing anything, unless you’re just collecting autographs.

If I announce I’ve bought your house, plop a garden chair on the lawn, and start boring the neighbours with my plans for a hot tub, I haven’t actually bought anything have I? I’m just trespassing, but with more confidence.

Trump announced the grand finale before he’d even written the script. When the ending failed to show up, he started threatening whichever country was standing closest to the stage.

This isn’t another example of Trump TACOing yet again. Not yet, anyway.

We’re still in the pre-TACO phase: chest-thumping, big announcements, deadlines, and a mountain of evidence that Trump’s mouth finished the race weeks before diplomacy ever got off the ground.

And Oman stands right in the middle of that gap, because the agreement Trump was bragging about gave Oman a specific role.

And this is the bit where Trump’s threat against Oman stops being just inane and horrible and becomes utterly stupid, because if Oman possesses on coastline on the Strait of Hormuz, then it’s pretty damn obvious by this point I would hope that we know Iran must occupy the other.

Oman is part of the geographical equation here, whether Trump likes it or not.

Trump can rename, claim, and declare anything American territory until someone distracts him with a cheeseburger. Oman isn’t moving.

The US-Iran memorandum described Iran and Oman administering traffic through the Strait and developing future navigation arrangements. Oman’s own statement referred to a joint working group and the need to respect the sovereignty of both coastal states and absolutely Oman and Iran have been holding talks on such things.

It is one of the two countries physically bordering the Strait.

So when Trump says Oman mustn’t “get in the way”, what he really means is that Oman must not exercise the role his own arrangement recognized back in June, despite being geographically impossible to ignore, with half of the Strait being Omani territorial waters.

The gap between his ears just keeps getting bigger it seems.

Oman has also spent years acting as a go-between for Washington and Tehran. When the United States wants to communicate with Iran while maintaining the usual performance that it definitely isn’t talking to Iran, Muscat tends to come in handy.

Messages go through Oman. Proposals go through Oman. Prisoner arrangements and negotiations have gone through Oman.

Oman is one of those emergency phone numbers Washington keeps in a little box on the wall marked ‘break glass when you’ve set the curtains on fire.’
Trump’s solution? Threaten to bomb the guy holding the emergency phone.
Now that isn’t footage from inside the negotiating room. It is reporting about the talks and the next stage of the process.

And that process still needs somewhere to happen.

Trump’s threat doesn’t make Oman unnecessary. It doesn’t change the coastline. It doesn’t produce a new mediator or suddenly cause Iran to accept Washington’s terms.

All it does is give Oman yet another reason to wonder why it ever bothers answering Washington’s calls in the first place.

That’s the trap starting to snap shut.

Trump wants the world to see a trembling Oman being bulldozed by American muscle. Look again, and you see a president flailing at one of the last governments still willing to bail him out of his own mess. Natalie Harp can’t clean this mess up after you Donnie.
Here is what Trump’s “all signed” victory actually ended up looking like when the deadline finally arrived.
No final deal.

Fuel prices on the rise.

Three ships tracked passing on Sunday. That’s it.

That’s quite a nosedive from the Strait is open, isn’t it?

Oil prices are coming down, he says.

America has total command, he says.

Yet the deadline package shows restricted traffic, rising costs, and a deal that didn’t happen.

If America has total command of Hormuz, why is Oman apparently capable of causing such a problem that Trump feels compelled to threaten it with bombing?

If the agreement is signed, why is the deadline passing without one?

It’s almost as if yelling ‘Mission Accomplished!’ and actually fixing the problem are two entirely different things, news to Trump I daresay.

Trump’s threat against Oman didn’t come from calm, victorious statesmanship. It came because his bluster finally ran straight into the wall of reality.

The deal was signed until it wasn’t.

The Strait was open except for the restricted shipping.

Prices were falling except for the prices people were actually paying.

And Trump was supposedly in command, except for this one little coastal state he apparently needed to threaten into cooperating, despite always having been his friend.

The more Trump insists that America can impose whatever it likes, the more revealing it becomes when another government’s cooperation still matters.

And Oman’s cooperation really does matter.

The United States has military access arrangements covering facilities at Duqm and Salalah. Duqm is large enough to accommodate aircraft carriers. American carrier groups have visited Oman for logistics, maintenance, replenishment and port calls.

Not exactly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, I know.

No explosions. No dramatic speeches. Just food, repairs, supplies, maintenance and somewhere for exhausted people to get off the ship for a bit.

In other words, all the boring essentials without which America’s mighty military is just a very expensive metal bathtub drifting around, waiting for the next thing to break. Cough cough USS Abraham Lincoln.

The US Navy has described Omani port visits as supporting maintenance and logistics while allowing sailors to rest and recharge.

Oman gives American naval planners options. Trump has threatened the government providing those options, and that’s a real weakness in the way the United States sustains military power across the region.

Washington needs other governments to keep saying yes to them basically.

Yes, you may use this port. Yes, you may replenish here. Yes, you may maintain your ships. Yes, we’ll pass your message to Tehran. Yes, we’ll host another round of talks despite everybody pretending the previous round solved everything already.

Trump acts like these governments should be grateful just to be threatened by him, then looks surprised when cooperation suddenly gets harder.
“Not nearly long enough.”
It’s easy for old bone spurs to decide sailors haven’t been deployed long enough while he relaxes in the Oval Office. His bathroom isn’t rocking through the Arabian Sea, and his bed isn’t wedged above someone else’s in a steel sardine can that’s been away for hundreds of days.

The Lincoln, its deployment, and the thousands of people aboard it have become part of the cost of sustaining Trump’s Iran war.

A carrier cannot be everywhere. Keep one deployed for longer and something else gives. Maintenance gets squeezed. People become exhausted. Mental health gets crushed. Another region loses coverage when you end up having to pull a different carrier away to relieve it.

And those useful ports suddenly become more valuable, not less.

So what does Trump do?

He picks a fight with a country offering exactly the kind of access that gives the Navy more options.

Keep the sailors out longer. Stretch the fleet thinner. Threaten the only partner with the decent parking spot.

Sun Tzu must be shaking his head in absolute despair.
The polite mainstream media version calls this ‘Trump taking aim at US allies,’ as if he’s just tossing darts at a map for fun.

But the story isn’t simply that Trump said something offensive.

He says offensive things all the time. The supply is truly endless, for a head as empty as his is, he really can be quite imaginative when it comes to belittling others.

The important bit is what the threat revealed.

American power in the Middle East depends on relationships. It depends on ports, airspace, intelligence cooperation, maintenance, supply routes and governments deciding that working with Washington is still better than telling it to get lost.

Trump treats all of that as tribute.

If a government has its own interests, he calls it disloyal. If it refuses an order, he threatens it. If it negotiates independently, he says it is getting in America’s way.

Partnership, in Trump’s mind, means doing exactly what he says while appearing grateful that he hasn’t bombed you yet.

Oman doesn’t need to close a port tomorrow for this threat to be damaging.

It makes American cooperation harder to defend. It makes Oman’s job as mediator harder. It tells every government watching that Washington might answer disagreement with a bombing threat. What a glowing advert for closer ties with the United States in which case.

Sign here. Host our ships. Carry our messages. And don’t forget, the President might threaten to bomb you if you ever think for yourself.

Trump wanted Oman to look terrified. Instead, he just reminded everyone why he still needs it. Oman is stitched into the Hormuz arrangements, is Washington’s go-to diplomatic channel, and is the security partner that keeps the Navy’s options open. Trump hasn’t cleared an obstacle here. He’s threatened one of his last escape routes from this Iran madness Israel talked him into, and has made American cooperation look like a liability in the process, all whilst boxing in his own forces at the same time.

For on Trump’s Middle East Merry-go-Round of madness, do stick with the channel for more such as this example here.

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