President orders Pentagon to scale back ‘inappropriate and hostile’ exercises with South Korea

President Donald Trump threatened to bomb the Gulf state of Oman, an American ally, if it interfered in negotiations with Iran over control of the strait of Hormuz, Fox News reported on Monday morning.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported that Trump said to him in a phone call on Sunday.

Oman is America’s longest-serving diplomatic and military partner in the Gulf, dating to a treaty of “Amity and Commerce” in 1833. Oman has served as a go-between in negotiations between Iran and the United States over the years, and has offered the United States military access to its ports since 1980, and opened ports capable of servicing an aircraft carrier to the United States in 2019.

Iran began attacking those ports in Oman with drones at the start of the war in February, leading Oman to withdraw its agreement to service US navy oilers.

This is not the first time Trump has threatened to strike Oman. In May, as Oman and Iran began discussing a mechanism for collecting tolls on ship traffic through the strait of Hormuz, Trump said at a press availability that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up.”

President ⁠Donald Trump reiterated ⁠on Monday that ⁠Iran ​cannot have a ⁠nuclear weapon amid a lack ⁠of progress in ​diplomatic ‌efforts ‌to resolve the ‌Middle East conflict.

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