President Donald Trump rejected a plan that would see Oman and Iran jointly charge a toll for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, threatening harsh consequences for the U.S. ally if it follows through on discussions that have reportedly taken place with Tehran.
“Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up,” he told reporters Wednesday at a White House Cabinet meeting. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”
Opening up the strait, a critical transit lane for some 20 percent of the world’s oil, has emerged as a lodestar in negotiations to end the three-month U.S. war against Iran. The Middle East country effectively closed the waterway soon after it was first attacked by the U.S. and Israel in February. The strait has remained choked off, even after the president announced a ceasefire in April contingent on Iran fully reopening it.
Global gas prices are on the rise as a result. And near-nonexistent transit through the strait has raised the specter of a worldwide food crisis on the horizon, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned last week.
Oman, which has long enjoyed positive relations with Washington but is not a member of Trump’s Abraham Accords, has been a key interlocutor in behind-the-scenes negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and more recently in the push to end the war between Tehran and Washington.
But Trump on Wednesday reiterated his position that Iran would have no control over the waterway as part of a peace deal to end the war.
“The strait’s gotta be open to everybody,” he said. “It’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”
The State Department amplified the president’s harsh rhetoric in a social media post at the conclusion of the Cabinet meeting.
Bloomberg News first reported on the talks between Iranian and Omani officials. A spokesperson for the Omani Embassy in Washington could not immediately be reached for comment. A person who answered the main line at the embassy said it was closed for Eid.
