Trump Threatens to Bomb Oman as US Iran Truce Deadline Passes Without a Deal

US President Donald Trump threatened Monday to bomb Oman, a longtime American ally and the traditional intermediary between Washington and Tehran, if the Gulf sultanate interferes with US objectives regarding the Strait of Hormuz, according to Fox News, which first reported the remarks made in an interview with correspondent Trey Yingst. If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the (expletive) out of them, Trump said, according to Fox News’ account of the interview, cited widely by other outlets including CNN, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

The threat came the same day a 60 day memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, signed in June to create a window for negotiating a broader peace deal, officially expired without an agreement, according to CNN and the Associated Press. Asked by reporters in the Oval Office whether he would seek an extension, Trump said simply no, Bloomberg reported. The truce had been meant to address Iran’s nuclear program and the terms of sanctions relief, though both countries had repeatedly traded strikes throughout the 60 day period, according to CNN’s reporting.

The immediate trigger for Trump’s threat was news that Iran and Oman were nearing their own bilateral arrangement to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that lies entirely within the two countries’ territorial waters and through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passed before the conflict began, according to Al Jazeera. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei described the emerging mechanism as the first time an arrangement had been developed to simultaneously safeguard the sovereign rights of the two littoral states and ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels, according to Al Jazeera’s report of his remarks. Baghaei also argued that the expired US deadline had already been rendered void by earlier American violations of the truce, per the same report.

This was not the first time Trump has threatened Oman over the same issue. Al Jazeera reported that Trump made a nearly identical threat in May, when a reporter asked him during a cabinet meeting whether he would accept a short term deal allowing Iran and Oman to jointly control the strait. Laleh Khalili, a professor of Gulf studies at the University of Exeter, told Al Jazeera that a solution reached without US involvement would demonstrate American impotence in the dispute and suggested Trump’s anger stemmed partly from being cut out of an arrangement covering waters the US does not control. CNN separately reported that former US ambassador to Oman Marc Sievers said he was left puzzled by the threat, noting that Trump himself had agreed in a signed document that Muscat would conduct dialogue with Tehran over the strait’s future administration.

Trump also said Monday that his administration has opened a direct backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, telling Fox News the IRGC are good poker players, but they’re dying, a reference to the economic pressure he says the ongoing US naval blockade of Iranian ports is placing on Tehran, according to CBS News’ live coverage of the interview. An IRGC spokesperson denied any such talks were taking place, calling Trump’s claim mere fantasies caused by delusions and nightmares, in comments carried by Iran’s semi official Tasnim News and reported by Al Jazeera.

Separately, Trump’s son in law and adviser Jared Kushner met for more than four hours Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to ABC News, pressing him to advance the administration’s Gaza ceasefire plan and not create obstacles, an Israeli source told CNN. The Board of Peace, the body Kushner co leads overseeing the plan, described the talks as deep and constructive, according to CBS News.

Trump has a documented pattern of escalating rhetoric before stepping back from stated deadlines. Euronews reported that in March, Trump gave Iran 48 hours to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face what he called obliteration of its oil installations, a deadline that passed without US strikes and was instead followed by an announced pause and the opening of indirect contacts with Tehran. Whether Monday’s threat against Oman follows the same pattern, or whether the expired memorandum marks a genuine turning point toward wider escalation, remained unclear as of this writing.