As Iran Truce Expires and Options Shrivel, Trump Lashes Out

 

As Iran Truce Expires and Options Shrivel, Trump Lashes Out

 

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.

 

Luke Broadwater

By Luke Broadwater

Luke Broadwater is a White House correspondent. He reported from Washington.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/us/politics/trump-iran-truce-oman.html

Aug. 17, 2026

 

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.

 

“I think, ultimately, his threats against Oman are just a reflection of his frustration with the situation he’s created, where he has no good options,” said Nate Swanson, of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project. “He’s just reflexively lashing out, and this time Oman got in the cross hairs.”

 

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.

 

On the battlefield, the United States has struck thousands of targets in Iran and dealt serious blows to the country’s military capabilities, but the president has struggled to achieve the war’s political objectives.

 

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

 

“It is mostly symbolic, but symbols matter,” Justin Logan, the director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said of the expiration of the memorandum of understanding. He emphasized that the main function of the agreement was to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical shipping lane in the Persian Gulf that Iran effectively closed during the war.

 

“The tragic part here is that the United States is clawing to try to get back to the state of the Middle East before the war started,” he said.

 

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 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.

 

Speaking to the reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump was asked whether he was any closer to ending the war now than he was when the memorandum of understanding was agreed to. The president did not directly answer, but claimed that Iran wants to “make a deal, but they’re not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary.”

 

He added, “Look, we’re in there for one reason: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

 

Mr. Trump also downplayed concerns that sailors on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln have been deployed for too long with conditions worsening. The ship is supporting U.S. operations in the Middle East against Iran.

 

Mr. Trump called reports of food shortages on the ship “fake news.”

 

“The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time, good period of time, but over the years we’ve had him out there much longer,” the president said.

 

Mr. Trump also said the United States could declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States.

 

“We control it with the blockade, and I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” he said.

 

But it was Oman that received the president’s fury on Monday. Iran has said it has been holding talks with Oman on temporarily reopening the strait.

 

“I don’t think they behaved very well,” he said of the U.S. ally, “but we’d handle them very easily, just like we do other things.”

 

It was the second time this year the president has threatened the country. In May it emerged that Oman had discussed working with Iran to charge fees for ships to pass through the strait.

 

“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” Mr. Trump told reporters then. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”

 

A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Mr. Swanson said he believed the president had several options to try to resolve the war.

 

He said the United States could continue with a policy of what Mr. Trump has called “low key” economic pressure, which has thus far not produced results; ramp up a military campaign against Iran, even as U.S. munition stockpiles dwindle; or return to negotiations to produce a deal similar to the one both sides already abandoned. Or, he said, Mr. Trump could wash his hands completely of the entire war, and ask Gulf allies to get more involved in the Strait of Hormuz.

 

“I’m wondering if at some point, either by choice or incompetence, we kind of just put our blinders on and let the Gulf figure it out,” Mr. Swanson said.

 

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.