OOMCO confirmed a fuel storage tank at Duqm Port was "involved in an incident" on Wednesday, sustaining minor damage — the second attack on the Omani port in three days. Iran had previously struck Duqm's fuel storage on Day 4 of the conflict. Duqm sits on Oman's Arabian Sea coast, roughly 550 kilometres from Iran, and was developed over the past decade with billions of dollars in investment as a deep-water industrial port expressly outside the strait of Hormuz.
The repeated targeting completes a systematic pattern. Iran has now struck every major alternative to Hormuz-dependent export: the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline terminal on the UAE's eastern coast, which carries 1.5 million barrels per day and was built specifically to bypass the strait; Duqm, designed to render Hormuz irrelevant for Omani and potentially regional exports; and the production and refining facilities at Ras Laffan and Ras Tanura that feed these routes. The operational message is that no Gulf energy leaves the region without Iranian tolerance — whether through the strait or around it.
The strike also complicates Oman's diplomatic position. Muscat has maintained its traditional role as a neutral intermediary — Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi spoke directly with Iran's FM Araghchi this week to press for a ceasefire. Iranian attacks on Omani infrastructure test the durability of that posture. For energy planners across The Gulf who spent tens of billions of dollars on Hormuz-bypass infrastructure over the past decade, the core assumption — that distance from the chokepoint provided safety — has been tested twice in 72 hours and failed both times.
