A 60-day window for the United States and Iran to negotiate an end to their conflict and reach a nuclear agreement expired Monday without a deal, and President Trump responded by threatening military action against Oman if it interferes with efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
"If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s*** out of them," Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News, adding of the Gulf sultanate: "I don't think they behaved very well, but we'd handle them very easily." The memorandum of understanding setting the 60-day deadline was signed at Versailles in June, and negotiators are now, by most accounts, further apart than when the clock started, according to NBC News.
A blockade, a workaround, and a threat
At the center of the standoff is Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a large share of the world's seaborne oil passes. Trump said the United States has "total control" over the strait and that the blockade — which he said has cut roughly a week's worth of barrels from the market — "has been very effective"; only 13 ships passed through the strait over the weekend, three of them on Sunday. Brent crude has climbed past $90 a barrel amid the disruption.
Oman, which sits along the strait's southern shore, has been quietly brokering a separate arrangement with Tehran on ship transit. Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said "an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route," while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran had "not yet made a decision to restart negotiations" with Washington and insisted the waterway "will remain Iranian," according to Al Jazeera. Trump, for his part, said he was in "no hurry" to end the five-month conflict and called on Iran to "put up the white flag of surrender."
Pushback in Washington
The threat against a longtime U.S. security partner drew a swift response on Capitol Hill. Senator Tim Kaine said he would introduce a resolution barring military action against Oman without congressional authorization. Inside the administration, Jared Kushner struck a different tone, framing the pressure campaign in economic rather than military terms and arguing Iran's economy is "way worse off" than before the standoff began.
With the deadline now lapsed and neither side showing movement on the core disputes — sanctions relief, the nuclear file and control of the strait — the immediate path forward runs through Oman's informal arrangement rather than any resumption of direct U.S.-Iran talks, leaving global oil markets exposed to further disruption in the meantime.
