Trump Lashes Out as Preliminary Deal With Iran Expires

President Trump took aim at Oman, a U.S. ally that has been mediating the talks, as efforts to end a war he started have faltered.

As a crumbling truce with Iran officially collapsed on Monday, President Trump signaled his frustration at his inability to resolve a war that he started but cannot seem to end.

In an interview with Fox News, the president lashed out at an American ally, Oman, that has been trying to mediate negotiations with Iran.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Mr. Trump said in a phone interview, according to Fox News’s Trey Yingst.

The latest threat toward Oman, which has facilitated talks between the United States and Iran for years and maintains that it is still a neutral mediator, came as Mr. Trump found himself without much leverage to reach the goals he set out at the start of the war.

Hostilities have now stretched past the six-month mark in a conflict that began with the United States and Israel launching strikes across Iran in February. Administration officials pledged at the time that the war would be over in four to six weeks.

In June, the two sides agreed to a memorandum of understanding, but that quickly fall apart amid disputes over its wording. Both Mr. Trump and Iran’s leaders have said that the deal is essentially dead.

As the cease-fire officially expires, the president and his team have promised to level crushing sanctions against Iran this week, though the details of those plans have yet to be unveiled. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the United States can maintain a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil shipping corridor, indefinitely — an acknowledgment that there was no end to the war in sight.

In the Fox News interview, Mr. Trump sought to project patience, saying he was “not in a hurry” to secure a deal while maintaining that his central goal remained preventing Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.

But in the meantime, it was Oman that received the president’s fury.

It was the second time this year the president has threatened the country. After it emerged in May that Oman had discussed partnering with Iran to charge fees for ships to pass through the strait, Mr. Trump snapped.

“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” Mr. Trump told reporters that month. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

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