The expiration of a 60-day U.S.-Iran ceasefire has exposed a contradiction at the heart of Donald Trump’s strategy: he is presenting military threats as leverage while promising to end the conflict through diplomacy.

Trump threatened to “bomb the s*** out of” Oman if it “gets in the way” of efforts involving the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route between Iran and Oman.¹ The conservative framing emphasizes force and control, portraying the warning as an attempt to project dominance as Iran and Oman discuss arrangements for maritime traffic. It also places the threat against the backdrop of Iran’s efforts to assert influence over a waterway through which a major share of the world’s oil passes.

The liberal account instead casts the episode as evidence of diplomatic failure. Oman is not a party to the war and has long served as a U.S. partner and backchannel to Tehran. Trump’s threat, it argues, has unsettled an ally while the president’s promised breakthrough remains elusive. “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News, according to the report.²

Both perspectives agree that the ceasefire expired without a comprehensive settlement and that Hormuz has become a central pressure point. They diverge over what the threat signifies: a show of resolve in the conservative telling, or an increasingly erratic policy that risks widening the war in the liberal one.

The market response offered a less rhetorical measure of the stakes. CNBC reported that Brent crude rose 2.7% to $90.87 a barrel as investors absorbed the prospect of renewed fighting and disrupted shipping.³ Trump, meanwhile, said he was “not in a hurry” to reach a deal and urged Iran to surrender, even as he maintained that preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon remained his “number one Goal.”²

The result is a diplomacy defined by pressure but lacking an agreement: the ceasefire has lapsed, the regional risks are spreading, and Oman—once a mediator—has been drawn into the president’s threats.