Trump threatens to bomb Oman if it 'gets in the way' of Iran deal over Strait of Hormuz

The August 17 threat to "bomb the shit out of" Oman--a U.S. ally that happens to be negotiating its own transit understandings with Iran--is the logical culmination of a summer-long executive seminar in dispensing with constitutional niceties. Where the May 27 threat (2026-05-27) merely warned Oman would be "blown up" for not behaving, today's statement dispenses with even the pretense of self-defense, conditioning military obliteration on a foreign government's failure to genuflect before a U.S.-Iran deal that has, by the administration's own admission, already expired under its own MOU. The War Powers Resolution, that dead letter of legislative vanity, requires "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Oman has done none of these things. It is, rather, exercising its sovereignty in a waterway the president seems to have already mentally annexed as U.S. territory (see the August 14 declaration fantasy). The threat is therefore not an Article II self-defense claim; it is an ultimatum backed by airstrikes, delivered via Fox News, with Congress watching from the cloakroom, apparently content to treat the commander-in-chief's bombing schedule as a ratings-driven programming decision. The constitutional void here isn't just about Oman. This latest iteration folds neatly into a pattern of escalating unilateralism over the Strait of Hormuz that has transformed the region into a stage for performative ultimatums--from demanding Iran's "white flag of surrender" (today) to threatening power-plant obliteration (2026-07-09) and invasion (2026-06-21)--all while the legislative branch remains on a permanent coffee break. The 60-day negotiating window under the U.S.-Iran memorandum was never a treaty ratified by the Senate; it was an executive-to-executive scribble that expired into a void, and now the void is filled with threats to attack third countries that dare conduct their own diplomacy. It's a neat inversion of the non-delegation doctrine: Congress hasn't delegated authority to bomb Muscat to clear a path for a hypothetical deal; it has simply stopped pretending that its consent matters. One imagines the War Powers Clause has now been so thoroughly hollowed out, it could serve as a buoy in the very strait the president is threatening to turn into a shooting gallery.