Donald Trump threatened Monday to bomb Oman if it gets "in our way" over a deal on the Strait of Hormu, as Muscat and Tehran negotiate the maritime chokepoint's future without Washington at the table.
Muscat, Oman © Mena Today
Donald Trump threatened Monday to bomb Oman if it gets "in our way" over a deal on the Strait of Hormu, as Muscat and Tehran negotiate the maritime chokepoint's future without Washington at the table.
"If Oman gets in our way, we're going to bomb the hell out of them," Trump told Fox News' Trey Yingst, according to the president's post on X, responding to a question about the ongoing Iran-Oman talks.
Iranian and Omani officials have spent weeks trying to hammer out an agreement on ship passage through the strait, which Tehran has kept largely sealed since late February, after the joint Israeli-American strike on Iran ignited the wider Middle East war. Washington responded with a blockade of Iranian ports.
"Talks between Iran and Oman are continuing seriously," an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said Monday. "Exchanges are underway on the text of a joint declaration."
Trump also demanded Iran "raise the white flag of surrender," insisting he's "in no rush" and that November's midterm elections "change nothing" about his thinking. Yingst reported that Trump acknowledged a direct communication channel exists between Washington and Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
The threats follow Tehran's declaration Saturday that the strait - through which a fifth of the world's oil once flowed - "will remain Iranian," after Trump claimed the passage would become U.S. territory once Iran is "defeated."
Hezbollah on Wednesday rejected accusations that it had dispatched experts to Yemen to fight alongside the Houthis in their war against the internationally recognised government and Saudi Arabia.
The US Democrats' "blue wave" of midterm election victories is already causing ripples across the rest of the world, where trade partners, strategic allies and enemies all see implications in the result.
Iran and the United States are still far from a deal to end their war, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday, as US President Donald Trump declined to rule out a resumption of US combat operations after the elections in the United States.
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