Live updates: Trump threatens Oman as US

• Threat to Oman: President Donald Trump warned of an attack on Oman if it “gets in the way” of efforts in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump previously threatened the US ally in May.

• Iran agreement expires: The 60-day deadline for the two sides to reach a deal toward ending the conflict has now passed. Trump again said he is in no rush and claimed his administration has established a direct backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the IRGC denies.

• Main priority: The president reiterated that the top goal in the war is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, undercutting advisers who say keeping oil prices low is an important priority.

• Gaza ceasefire plan: Meanwhile, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today for more than four hours. Kushner pressed Netanyahu to move forward with the Trump-backed Gaza ceasefire plan and not “create obstacles,” according to an Israeli source.

On Friday, President Donald Trump said he plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory after “we finish defeating Iran,” which he said would happen “pretty soon.”

Days before, the president claimed the US had “total control” over the waterway. “We own it, and at some point, maybe they’ll do something, and then they get blown away,” Trump told reporters.

Trump has repeatedly claimed the US “owns” the Strait of Hormuz, parts of which form the territorial seas of Iran and Oman. However, maritime law experts point out claiming a territory is not this simple.

“Under US law, claiming territory by a Presidential declaration (or) decree is not enough. There are important constitutional requirements that must be cleared first,” Jason Chuah, Professor of Maritime Law at City, University of London and Distinguished Fellow, Maritime Institute of Malaysia, told CNN.

While the occupation of a territory might give the occupying state control over the area, he said, “on its own, it does not convey legal title.”

Simon Baughen, Professor of Shipping Law at Swansea University, said the path toward claiming Hormuz as a US territory was unlikely to come to fruition.

A more likely outcome, Baughen suggested, could be that the US, Iran and Oman agree to open the Strait of Hormuz and charge tolls to vessels passing through the waterway.

But, he said: “That is also illegal under customary international law and also the provisions of the 1982 UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) Treaty.”

Neither Iran nor Oman has absolute rights over the Strait of Hormuz, Chuah pointed out. “Freedom of navigation prevails. That is the law,” he said.

“A navy can control a waterway. It cannot, merely by controlling it, rewrite the law of title,” Chuah added.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to attack Oman if it interferes with his country’s efforts in the Strait of Hormuz, as the conflict with Iran continues and a two-month window for peace talks expires without a clear path to end the war.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Trey Yingst that was published today.

Here’s what else is going on in the Middle East:

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Tal Shalev, Billy Stockwell, Mostafa Salem, Hanna Ziady, Aida Karimi and Laura Sharman contributed to this reporting.

In a meeting that lasted more than four hours, US envoy Jared Kushner pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move forward with the Trump-backed Gaza ceasefire plan and “not create obstacles,” according to an Israeli source familiar with the discussions.

Netanyahu, who rejected the 15-point plan earlier this month, said that making progress on the plan was “problematic” because of the upcoming Israeli elections at the end of October, the source told CNN. Courting a right-wing voter base and trailing in repeated polls, Netanyahu has been unwilling to make concessions on Gaza ahead of the elections.

Instead, Netanyahu told Kushner and Board of Peace director Nickolay Mladenov that Hamas needed to take steps first, the source said. The two met with Hamas in Egypt on Sunday.

Netanyahu has demanded that Hamas completely disarm before Israel begins to withdraw its forces from Gaza. But Hamas has said it’s only willing to disarm if that occurs alongside a sequenced withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.

This is not the first time President Donald Trump has threatened Oman; he also did so back in May. But it’s also just not the rare for Trump to threaten other countries, period.

Back in May, CNN calculated that Trump had either attacked or threatened one out of every 13 counties in the world. Oman was at least the 15th, out of nearly 200 countries.

Trump has launched strikes in seven countries in his second term alone: Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. He’s also threatened or left open the possibility of strikes against seven others: Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (which is part of Denmark), Mexico, Panama and now Oman.

Of course, a dynamic we’ve also seen a lot during the Iran war is that often Trump’s threats don’t necessarily mean a whole lot. Repeatedly, he has made very specific threats and then, even when Iran didn’t comply with his demands, he declined to make good on those threats.

Trump will often cite some type of indication of progress when backing off the threat, but that progress has regularly failed to materialize.

There are currently no backchannel talks between the United States and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), contrary to US President Donald Trump’s earlier claim, an IRGC spokesperson said Monday.

Earlier today, Trump told Fox News that his administration had established a direct backchannel with the IRGC. He added that he was “not in a hurry” to reach a deal, even as the 60-day window for peace talks closed on Monday without any concrete plans announced to end the war.

In response, a Revolutionary Guards spokesperson told Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency that Trump’s claim is a “lie” and “nothing more than fantasies stemming from the delusions and nightmares brought on by defeat and desperation in the war.”

The spokesperson also said diplomacy is not within the remit of the IRGC, according to Tasnim.

US President Donald Trump reiterated today “the number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon,” as we’ve reported.

He is the latest American president to come up against a hardline Iranian regime, with the war now in its sixth month.

Here’s a look at how some of Trump’s predecessors interacted with Tehran:

Almost two years after becoming president, Carter faced the Iran hostage crisis after 90 people, including 66 Americans, were taken hostage when the US embassy in Tehran was seized following the Iranian Revolution.

At the beginning of the crisis, Carter sent US officials to Iran to negotiate the release of the hostages, though Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini refused to meet with them.

Carter’s foreign policy team “often seemed weak and vacillating” during the crisis, according to the US Office of the Historian.

A week later, Carter ordered Iranian assets in US banks to be frozen. In April 1980, when only some of the hostages had been released, Carter cut diplomatic ties with Iran, announcing further sanctions and ordering all Iranian diplomats to leave the US.

The crisis was eventually resolved after US officials, via Algeria, were able to negotiate the release of the hostages.

On January 19, 1981, the US and Iran signed an agreement to release them, and to unfreeze Iranian assets. After more than a year in captivity and minutes after Carter left the presidency, the hostages were released.

Carter’s successor Ronald Reagan declared Iran a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1984. But in 1986, his administration began covertly looking into ways to improve its relationship with Tehran, despite backing Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.

Reagan approved a high-profit sale of weapons to Iran despite an embargo, in the hopes that it would yield the return of Americans held hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a militia with close ties to Iran. Funds from some of the arms sales were diverted to the Contras, a minority Nicaraguan political group that was fighting the leftist Sandinista government.

The scandal was called the Iran-Contra affair, and it broke just before the 1986 midterm elections, posing an enormous threat to Reagan and his party.

According to PBS, when the scandal emerged, Reagan publicly denied that any operation had taken place. He then retracted his statement a week later, saying that it had not been an arms-for-hostages deal.

“Despite the fact that Reagan defended the actions by virtue of their good intentions, his honesty was doubted,” PBS explains. “Polls showed that only 14 percent of Americans believed the president when he said he had not traded arms for hostages.”

Obama managed to negotiate a tentative rapprochement with Tehran during his tenure, having vowed to unfreeze US-Iran relations in his 2008 presidential campaign.

Obama spoke by telephone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, the first direct conversation between leaders in Washington and Tehran since 1979, when Carter talked by telephone with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi before Pahlavi was overthrown.

Also in 2013, after years of negotiations, a landmark agreement was reached that slowed Iran’s nuclear development program in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions that caused the country’s economy to stagnate.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), finalized two years later in 2015, capped Iran’s uranium enrichment for 15 years and facilitated UN-led inspections to ensure Tehran’s adherence to the deal, in exchange for partially dissolving sanctions on Iranian oil wealth and unfreezing billions of dollars in assets.

Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis said Monday they had attacked what ⁠they described as ⁠a Saudi military ship and four escort ‌vessels ⁠in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles, following a weekend of escalation in the region.

According to the group’s spokesperson Yahya ⁠Saree, the vessels were targeted off the coast of Yemen’s port city of Mokha – the site of repeated Houthi attacks in recent days. CNN cannot independently verify the militant group’s latest claim, and there has been no immediate comment from Saudi authorities.

Clashes have intensified near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key maritime chokepoint, after the Houthi group declared a blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia is the main backer of Yemeni government forces.

Monday’s claimed attack comes after the Houthis launched several ballistic missiles at Mokha on Friday, according to Yemen’s internationally recognized government. The port later suspended operations, Reuters reported.

The Yemeni government’s armed forces said Sunday they had carried out nearly 200 attacks on the Houthi movement in the previous 24 hours.

On Monday, the Houthi group said it would continue monitoring all “Saudi enemy movements” in the area and vowed to “target these movements and mobilization, whether on land or at sea.”

CNN’s Mitchell McCluskey contributed reporting.

US President Donald Trump threatened today to attack Oman if it interferes with US efforts in the Strait of Hormuz, as the conflict with Iran continues and a two-month window for peace talks expires without a clear path to end the war.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Trey Yingst.

Trump’s comments come as the 60-day window for peace talks between the US and Iran, agreed to in June, closed Monday without any concrete plans announced for the war to end. Meanwhile, Iran said Monday that its talks with Oman regarding the Strait of Hormuz are complex but continuing.

This isn’t the first time Trump has threatened Oman, which is a US ally. At a Cabinet meeting in May, the president said: “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ‘em up.”

Trump also confirmed to Fox News that his administration has established a direct backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but said he is in no rush to reach a deal.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s threats against Oman.

Oil prices are rising modestly after a 60-day window for US-Iran peace talks closed Monday without any lasting deal to end the war.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, climbed 0.38% to $88.85 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, was broadly flat at $82.42 a barrel. Brent has climbed by about $10 a barrel from the lows seen in early August as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict stalled.

“We do not see an easy way out of the current situation,” Mohit Kumar, chief European economist at investment bank Jefferies wrote in a note. “Iran will not give up control over the Strait (of Hormuz) and the US would not accept a solution where Iran can charge tolls and control the passage of ships through the strait,” he added.

Despite the impasse, oil prices have remained below $100 a barrel for several months. That’s in part because shipping traffic through Hormuz is likely higher than official numbers suggest, according to Kumar.

The historic supply shock has also been softened by other factors, including alternative export routes out of the Gulf, China reducing its oil imports, the United States increasing production and drawdowns from global oil stockpiles.

“The global supply-demand situation is not that bad and the markets can withstand a few weeks of Strait closure,” Kumar said.

The deadline to end the war between Iran and the United States expired today, leaving both countries deadlocked over management of the Strait of Hormuz and the future of frozen Iranian funds. So, what happens now?

Tehran and Washington committed in a memorandum of understanding signed in June to achieve a “final deal in maximum 60 days” through negotiations, but also accounted for failure to do so by agreeing to extend that deadline with mutual consent.

What was set to be negotiated over two months was the future of Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief for Iran.

However, the 60-day ceasefire was mired with infringements. Iran rejected how ships were choosing to transit through the Strait of Hormuz and began targeting vessels, and the US responded by launching intensive strikes against Iranian targets. The Islamic Republic proceeded to fire missiles and drones on neighboring countries hosting US bases.

All eyes now turn towards negotiations between Iran and Oman expected to resolve how ships cross Hormuz. If the issue of movement in the maritime chokepoint is resolved, with agreement from Washington and its allies across the region, it may remove a major hurdle towards unlocking further negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions.

For now, Iranian officials have said that a “transit route map” has been agreed upon with Oman, but a final agreement including a joint statement has not been finalized.

Referring to one of the reasons for the delay, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said some “malevolent parties” want the region to “always be in a state of conflict and chaos.”

President Donald Trump reiterated Monday that the US’ top goal in the Iran war is preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon — undercutting some of his advisers who have emphasized keeping global oil and gas prices low as an equally important priority.

The president’s statement comes after Vice President JD Vance said last week that the administration has two goals in the war, including maintaining the flow of oil and gas from Gulf countries.

Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Vance was asked how the conflict could ultimately end.

“It’s ensuring that the Gulf countries continue to send oil and gas to the world economy so that we have energy price stability,” Vance said, adding: “That’s goal number one: Keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country. And then, obviously, goal number two is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”

When asked Friday about Vance’s comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “both goals are equally as important to the president.”

Saturday marked one of the deadliest days in Lebanon since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in June, an agreement intended to pave the way for negotiations toward a permanent end to the war.

The MoU’s opening paragraph called for an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” but fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has continued in southern Lebanon throughout the 60-day deadline to end the war under the agreement.

Israeli strikes killed 11 people and wounded 19 others in Lebanon on Saturday, according to the country’s health ministry, making it the deadliest day since the truce. The Israel Defense Force said the strikes were targeting Hezbollah infrastructure after the militant group carried out what it described as “an action” against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. It did not provide any details about the Hezbollah action.

Israel also agreed to withdraw its troops from two areas in southern Lebanon in another set of talks brokered by the US in June after the MoU was signed. The agreement stipulated that Hezbollah must disarm, but the group rejected that condition until Israel fully withdraws.

Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 4,346 people since March 2, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. The latest escalation comes as the 60-day period has expired without a final agreement, with negotiations stalled and both sides accusing each other of violating the terms of the MoU.

Inflation rates in Iran have reached “alarming levels,” with many working-class families in the country unable to afford basic food items, according to state-affiliated Iranian media.

Annual inflation in the country — measured over the 12-month period leading up to July — stands at 66%, according to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA).

The price of food has more than doubled since July last year, ILNA cited the Statistical Center of Iran as saying, with basic food items such as eggs, rice, meat and bread effectively becoming “luxury goods” for many.

Due to the rising cost of living, many workers are now only able to afford their living expenses for around eight days in each month, according to Faramarz Toufighi, a Labor activist cited in the ILNA report. “For more than 20 days of every month, workers are effectively left with nothing,” Toufighi said.

Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said Monday that improving the livelihoods of people in Iran remained the government’s top priority while cautioning that the “enemy’s strategy was to exploit the wave of price increases,” state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

Iran’s economy was in a dire state before the war too, with poor economic conditions a key driving factor behind the anti-regime demonstrations which kicked off in the Iranian capital city Tehran in 2025.

US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, in efforts to advance a stalled peace plan for Gaza, which Israel rejected earlier this month.

The 15-point plan was issued by Trump’s Board of Peace in late July, and outlined how Hamas would disarm if Israel halted strikes in Gaza and pulled troops back to the “yellow line.”

Here’s more on what the Board of Peace is:

Trump had initially floated the Board of Peace as part of a second phase of the US-brokered 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan in September.

The United Nations Security Council backed the plan in November — giving it international legitimacy — with a mandate for the board to oversee the demilitarization and rebuilding of Gaza.

But Trump had longer-term plans. The charter draft, obtained by CNN, describes the Board of Peace as an “international organization” promoting stability, peace and governance “in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”

Trump will serve as chairman of the board indefinitely, according to the charter, possibly holding the post beyond his second term as president.

Its members include Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and several other world leaders.

The Board of Peace will also sit above a “founding Executive Board” that includes Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Multiple Western nations declined to join the board earlier this year.

The UK said it would not sign up due to concerns about Russian involvement. Then-Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC the UK would not be one of the signatories “because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues.”

“We do also have concerns about (Russian President Vladimir) Putin being part of something, which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was difficult to see being “together with Russia in any council.” The issue, he said, “is that Russia is our enemy, and Belarus is their ally.”

France and Norway also declined, in part citing questions about how the Board of Peace would operate in conjunction with the UN.

US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, as mediators push to revive the US-backed Gaza peace plan, which Israel rejected earlier this month.

On Sunday, Kushner and Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya also held talks in Egypt to discuss the plan, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Let’s re-cap the latest developments here:

In late July, US President Donald Trump announced what he described as an historic agreement to secure the disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza — months after he first announced a US-brokered ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.

As armed groups in Gaza are disarmed, Trump said, Israeli forces will withdraw and an International Stabilization Force, working alongside a new Palestinian police force, will assume responsibility for security in territory.

Trump said he would be “very disappointed” if Israel rejected the plan, but just over a week later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did just that.

On August 9, Netanyahu said Israel rejected the plan and demanded the full disarmament of Hamas before any Israeli forces withdraw.

“I want to be precise here: Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said in his first remarks directly addressing the proposal.

Ahead of October’s election, Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is trailing in opinion polls, and the prime minister is seeking to balance pressure from Washington with demands from hardline Israeli ministers not to make concessions to Hamas.

Hamas said it would only go through with the deal if Israel halted strikes in Gaza and pulled troops back to the “yellow line,” as defined by the October ceasefire agreement.

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Abeer Salman, Oren Liebermann, Jeremy Diamond, Tal Shalev, Tim Lister, Eugenia Yosef and Ibrahim Dahman contributed reporting.

US envoy Jared Kushner is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an effort to advance the Trump administration’s stalled Gaza peace plan, one day after meeting Hamas.

Netanyahu publicly rejected the latest 15-point plan that US President Donald Trump hailed as a major breakthrough at the end of last month, putting the future of the deal in doubt.

On Sunday, Kushner held a rare meeting with Hamas’ new leader, Khalil al-Hayya, in El Alamein in Egypt. The director of the US-backed Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, also took part. An official familiar with the matter said the goal of the meeting was to turn the ceasefire plan into “concrete, verifiable steps,” including the disarmament of Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the beginning of reconstruction.

Hamas agreed to a disarmament plan but warned it could only happen if Israel upheld its obligations, including ending the near-daily attacks on Gaza and beginning to withdraw forces from the enclave.

In a joint statement on Sunday, a group of Arab and Muslim countries – including mediators Egypt and Qatar – condemned Israel for rejecting the plan.

“Such rejection confirms that Israel now bears responsibility for obstructing the efforts to bring peace in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the governments said.

Two drones fired from Iran targeted the office of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s prime minister in Iraq, a US ally in the region, its counter-terrorism agency said.

The drones also targeted the residence of the head of the protection agency, the statement added. No casualties were reported in the attack, the security agency said. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

“My personal office and the home of the head of the Security and Intelligence Agency were targeted by Iranian drone attacks earlier today,” the KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani wrote on X calling the attack a “dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability of the Kurdistan Region.”

The KRG houses Kurdish parties with cross-border ties to Iranian Kurds. US President Donald Trump claimed several times that his administration attempted to arm Kurds inside Iran during the war, but instead of clashing with the Iranian government, the Kurds “kept (the weapons) for themselves.”

Talks between Iran and Oman regarding the Strait of Hormuz are complex but continuing “in all seriousness,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday.

Baghaei pointed to several “actors trying to exert influence on this process” as a reason for the delay in a deal being announced, despite optimism in recent days that an agreement to secure passage through the critical waterway could be within reach.

Traffic through the waterway remains subdued compared to pre-war levels.

Baghaei said a “transit route map” has been agreed upon, but a final agreement including a joint statement has not been finalized, Tasnim reported. Referring to one of the reasons for the delay, Baghaei said some “malevolent parties” want the region to “always be in a state of conflict and chaos.”

With the memorandum of understanding now expired and no deal to end the war reached, the United States and Iran are both under pressure, an analyst told CNN on Monday.

“This is why it’s a game of chicken but the stakes are very different,” said Ali Vaez, deputy program director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.

The US is “choosing to try to bring Iran to its knees” and accepts the resulting economic fallout, while Iran sees surrender as an existential issue, Vaez said.

“At any cost, they are very unlikely to capitulate and to give in because they believe that that would be the end of the regime.”

Vaez said US-Iran diplomacy “is not dead but it is in dire straits,” noting that the memorandum “was just a page and a half” and “didn’t address any of the substantive disagreements” between both sides.

“If that (MOU) doesn’t stand for more than two weeks and the parties can’t find a way back into it then basically, yes, diplomacy is not going to deliver results and this is a formula for a ‘Forever War.’”

Vaez said Washington’s strategy of economic pressure on Iran will simply produce the same outcome as before –– “the hardening of the Iranian position.”

“Pressure is not a new strategy for the United States… continuation on the same trajectory is not going to produce a different result,” he noted.

The MOU unraveled soon after its June 17 signing, as disputes over control of the Strait of Hormuz reignited tensions and prompted renewed military strikes.

Iran plans to take action after US President Donald Trump made clear that inflicting economic pressure is part of Washington’s latest strategy, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported Monday.

First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref ordered “intensified market supervision” and said “inspection bodies should deal seriously with overpricing, underweight selling and hoarding,” reported Mehr.

He also announced that a central market oversight headquarters would start with offering guidance, which would move to legal action if violations continued, the outlet added.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Newsmax interview the US is going to apply measures that have “never been seen” on Iran, indicating Washington will continue to economically isolate the country and blockade its ports.

His comments came after Trump signaled plans to choke Iran economically. “We are only semi-negotiating with (Iran). We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump said.