President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Oman, a longstanding U.S. partner, over its reported talks with Iran to charge fees for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
On Wednesday, Trump dismissed an Iranian state media report that Oman and Iran were in discussions to jointly manage shipping through the waterway, which Iran militarized in retaliation for the U.S. and Israel launching the war on Feb. 28. Control of the Strait of Hormuz, sections of which run through Omani and Iranian territorial waters, has been a key sticking point of talks between the U.S. and Iran to end the three-month-long war. The effective closure of the Strait has skyrocketed energy prices and disrupted the trade of several other commodities around the world. U.S. attempts, including a naval blockade of Iranian ports, have thus far not fully restored commercial shipping through the Strait.
“The Strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that, they’ll be fine.”
Oman, a strategic partner of the U.S. for more than 50 years, has played a key role in efforts to mediate a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran. Earlier in the war, Iran also retaliated against the U.S. and Israel’s attacks by targeting Oman and other Gulf countries that host U.S. military bases.
Some have speculated that Trump misspoke and meant to refer to Iran. Trump appeared to have erred in his speech during earlier comments to press, saying that Venezuela, which the U.S. raided in January, “no longer has a navy, no longer has an air force, and no longer has a lot of people that were leading the country.” The President seems to have been referring to Iran, not Venezuela.
TIME has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump’s comments also come as the U.S. and Iran have traded new attacks, imperilling prospects of an imminent peace deal. Trump said on Wednesday that he was willing to “out-wait” Iran, dismissing the suggestion that the approaching mid-term elections might motivate him to accept a deal sooner.
Trump “is trying to prove he is not ‘soft’ on Iran to placate his critics, but such unpredictability puts the negotiations in jeopardy, especially considering how little trust Iranian negotiators have in the U.S. process,” William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, tells TIME.
New attacks
The U.S. military carried out overnight strikes on a military site in Iran’s Bandar Abbas, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday. U.S. forces had shot down four Iranian attack drones that threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the official said, and the facility, a ground control station, was preparing to launch a fifth drone. The official described the strikes as “purely defensive, and intended to maintain the cease-fire.”
In retaliation, Iranian forces targeted a U.S. airbase in the early hours of Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement carried by semi-official Tasnim news agency. The IRGC did not specify which base it had hit.
Tasnim also reported that the IRGC’s navy fired on a U.S. tanker that “tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz by turning off its radar system.”
The new attacks come as the U.S. and Iran are in the middle of negotiating a more definitive end to the war. Progress towards a deal has see-sawed since the two parties agreed to a cease-fire on April 8, with both sides continuing to trade low-level hostilities and level new threats.
Deal differences
Trump officials have repeatedly said that a deal is close, and Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baqai said on Monday that the U.S. and Iran “have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion.”
But several sticking points remain, and it appears that neither side wants to come out of the war looking like the bigger loser.
On Monday, Trump said he was “mandatorily requesting” that several Arab and Muslim nations sign the Abraham Accords to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as part of any deal with Iran.
Analysts said the move appeared to be an attempt both to turn any Iran deal into a bigger diplomatic win for Trump, and to discourage Israel from renewing attacks on Iran that could unravel any potential peace agreement. It seems unlikely that many of the countries will sign on, however, given their opposition to Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza and its objections to Palestinian sovereignty, analysts said.
The two parties have also offered conflicting messages about the potential deal.
Iranian state TV reported this week that it had obtained an unofficial draft of a U.S.-Iran agreement, which included terms that Iran and Oman would jointly manage traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and restore shipping to pre-war levels within a month. The reported draft also included the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade and withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iran’s area.
Earlier this week, Iranian sources told Reuters that the U.S. had agreed to unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets.
Trump rejected both claims on Wednesday. “We’re not talking about any easing of sanctions or giving money,” he said. The Trump Administration on Wednesday placed sanctions on Iran’s newly-created agency that is seeking to control shipping through the Strait.
The President also made his own contentious claim about the deal that’s yet to be agreed. In an interview with PBS on Wednesday, Trump said Iran is “going to give up their highly enriched uranium.”
Israel has repeatedly insisted that Iran abandon its nuclear program, and the Trump Administration has largely maintained the same, although it has offered more lenient views at times, with reports suggesting that negotiators were considering a temporary moratorium on Iran’s nuclear enrichment. Iran, which maintains that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes, has been reluctant to commit to giving up its enriched uranium stockpile, and instead said that its nuclear program will be up for discussion at a later point, not as part of the initial framework agreement.
The back-and-forth on a deal has been accompanied by threats from either side to resume the war. Trump reiterated on Wednesday his threat to “finish the job” if Iran does not agree to terms that are acceptable to the U.S. The President said he was not concerned about growing war-weariness among the American public or concerns of political fallout for Republicans.
Iran’s leaders “thought they were going to outwait me,” Trump said. “You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”
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