Trump threatens to bomb Oman over its deal with Iran on Hormuz, as 60-day MOU expires

US President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to bomb Oman and urged Iran to surrender, after Tehran announced that it had reached an agreement with Muscat on a plan for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between the two countries.

In a wide-ranging phone interview with Fox News, Trump called on Iran to "put up the white flag of surrender," and said he had "no time schedule" for the conflict. "I'm not in a hurry," he said, "the [US] midterm [elections] have nothing to do with my thinking."

Turning to the ongoing push to reach a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said the Iranians are "good poker players, but they're dying," indicating that the continued US naval blockade has added pressure on the regime.

Turning to the parallel talks between Iran and Oman to reach a deal on managing the strait, Trump warned that "if Oman gets in the way" of Washington's dealings with Iran, "we'll bomb the shit out of them."

Trump issued the unprecedented threat against Oman after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran that "an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route" with Muscat. He did not elaborate, but details that have previously emerged suggest the deal would reopen the strait, with ships entering through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman. Ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during the interim period.

Baghaei conceded the talks with Oman have gone slowly, "but we had planned, and still plan, to finalize the understanding in the form of a package: the map plus a joint statement."

His comments came as a 60-day deadline for finding an agreement to end the war under a June memorandum of understanding expired, with no signs of a deal between the US and Iran. The MOU, which Israel is not a party to, largely broke down soon after it was announced, and Iran resumed attacks on ships it accuses of trying to transit the strait without its permission, leading to US retaliatory strikes.

With the deadline expiring, Trump confirmed to Fox News that Washington has established a secret backchannel with officials from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, following an Axios report on the matter.

In a social media post on Sunday, the US president asserted that the US's top priority was to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon. "The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon," Trump wrote on Truth Social. His words appeared to be a direct contradiction to US Vice President JD Vance's comments last week that the US's top goal was to lower gas prices for Americans, and only the second priority was preventing Iran from going nuclear.