President Trump on Monday renewed a threat to bomb Oman if the Gulf nation obstructs his effort to end the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, delivering the warning on Fox News hours before a 60-day window for a negotiated settlement lapsed without a deal.
"If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them," Trump told Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst in a phone interview, his second such threat against a country that has long served as a back channel between Washington and Tehran. The Gulf nation of 5.3 million people, which has itself come under attack from Iran during the war, has decades of military and economic ties with the United States.
The threat and the missed deadline capped a day that also brought word from Tehran that it has narrowed differences with Muscat over how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point that carried about one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil before U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran on Feb. 28.
Talks over the strait
Iranian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said in Tehran that "an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route." Under details previously disclosed, the plan would send ships in through a lane close to Iran and out through a lane close to Oman, with no fees during an interim period. The United States has sought a workable transit deal before lifting its blockade of Iranian ports. Iran's foreign ministry said Monday that talks with Oman were "continuing in earnest" despite Trump's remark.
An expired window
Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran at the Palace of Versailles on June 17, on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit, pausing hostilities and setting a 60-day window, extendable only by mutual consent, for an agreement covering sanctions, Iran's nuclear program and other disputes. That window closed Monday. Trump said he would not impose a fresh deadline. "I have no time schedule. I'm not in a hurry," he told Yingst, and said Iran should "put up the white flag of surrender."
A new channel
Trump also confirmed for the first time that Washington has opened a direct back channel to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which U.S. and Israeli forces have targeted throughout the campaign. "They're good poker players, but they're dying," Trump said of the guard-corps leadership.
In Trump's telling
Fox News framed the remarks as unbroken resolve behind the demand that Iran abandon any nuclear-weapons capability. In a Truth Social post around the time of the interview, Trump wrote: "The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon." Asked whether November's midterm elections were shaping his strategy, the president said, "Midterms have nothing to do with my thinking," and played down concern about depleted U.S. munitions, calling what Washington had expended so far "peanuts."
The USS George Washington is en route to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, and U.S. forces in northern Iraq have begun withdrawing under a Sept. 30 deadline agreed with Baghdad to end the American military presence there.