US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC.
Day 172 | Trump threatens Oman: latest developments in US-Iran war
US President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to bomb Oman, 60 days after the signing of a memorandum of understanding towards a peace deal to end the war between the United States and Iran.
Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it "gets in the way" of a US deal with Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz and called for Iran to surrender.
"If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them," Trump told Fox News journalist Trey Yingst, referring to ongoing talks between Oman and Iran on control of the strait, while Washington is also pursuing its own talks.
Tehran and Muscat have been talking for weeks on future maritime navigation arrangements through the shipping route, and the foreign ministry in Tehran said earlier Monday that the two sides were working on a joint declaration.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said on Monday that a 60-day deadline for negotiations included in June's memorandum of understanding was "irrelevant" because the US had violated the deal early on.
"We did not begin any negotiations because, a few weeks after the signing, widespread violations of the agreement began, thereby rendering the 60-day provision irrelevant."
The Yemen's Houthis said on Monday they had targeted a Saudi military vessel and four accompanying boats in the Red Sea, as part of their maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia.
Yahya Saree, military spokesperson for the Iran-backed Houthis, said they had "succeeded in targeting a military landing ship belonging to the Saudi enemy, accompanied by four military patrol boats, in the Red Sea off the coast of Mokha, using several ballistic missiles".
The Houthis have been at war with Saudi Arabia since it intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015, but a ceasefire had been in place since 2022.
It broke down last month as Yemen was sucked into the wider Middle East war.
Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday it would consider three missing pilots to be prisoners in Qatar, despite Doha's denials, until it clarified their fate.
Tehran has said the Iranians went missing while carrying out an operation against the United States' Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on March 2.
On Saturday, Iranian authorities alleged for the first time that the pilots had been captured in Qatar. Doha denied holding the pilots and said it had invited Tehran "to be briefed on the details of the search and rescue operations in April".
Baqaei said: "Until the pilots' situation is clarified, we consider them prisoners and will spare no effort to shed light on their fate."
Iran prepared for larger fight and views US deal as delay tactic, report says
Iran’s hard-line leaders treated a mid-June memorandum of understanding with the United States as little more than a pause that would let Washington and ‘Israel’ ease pressure on the global economy while preparing a larger assault, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing Iranian and Arab officials.
Instead of trusting the diplomatic track, Tehran used the roughly two-month window to reorganize its forces, accelerate weapons production, and ready itself for a broader fight.
The agreement, signed under President Donald Trump, was intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin winding down hostilities.
Iranian officials, however, saw it differently.
“In their view the pact was likely just an attempt by the U.S. and Israel to take pressure off the global economy and buy time for a bigger attack down the road,” the Journal reported.
Hard-liners in Tehran therefore moved quickly to strengthen the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ control over the regular army, install veterans of the Iran-Iraq war and past internal crackdowns in key posts, expand domestic counterintelligence, and ramp up missile and drone production.
Arab intelligence services have detected communications between Iran and its militia allies in Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere that point to a strategic shift aimed at widening the war and raising costs for the United States.
Officials familiar with the findings say Iran has been discussing offensive operations on enemy territory—moves that have alarmed smaller Gulf states such as Kuwait.
The Revolutionary Guard has also sent advisers to proxies in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to coordinate potential escalations.
Revolutionary Guard spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebbi captured the regime’s approach in July: “We took full advantage of the ceasefire period. We enhanced our capabilities, accelerated our missile production rate and improved missile accuracy.”
Iranian forces have already tightened their grip on the Strait of Hormuz through ship attacks and extended operations into the Red Sea, complicating Saudi efforts to bypass the Persian Gulf chokehold.
A Tehran-based defense analyst close to the government, Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, told the Journal that many in Iran believe the main confrontation still lies ahead.
“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” he said.
“What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation.”
Among the options reportedly under consideration are pre-emptive strikes, sabotage of undersea internet cables in the Persian Gulf, efforts to stir unrest among Shiite communities in Kuwait and Bahrain, and even possible ground operations in Kuwait.
Kuwaiti forces previously foiled one such attempt in May when they detained Revolutionary Guard members who had arrived by fishing boat.
‘Israeli’ officials have expressed concern at the speed of Iran’s recovery and rebuilding of missile infrastructure despite earlier airstrikes, according to earlier reports by Hebrew media.
VIDEO - Oman didn’t “behave very well,” says Trump
"No, I don't think [Oman] they behaved very well, but we handled them very easily, just like we do others," says US President Donald Trump while answering a reporter's question after Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it "gets in the way" of a US deal with Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz.
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