Americans are paying the highest gas prices ever recorded for August — $4.06 a gallon on average, over a dollar more than a year ago — and the establishment press is running with an unverified claim that President Trump threatened to bomb Oman, a country that's supposed to be on our side, all while the oil majors pocket $90 billion in war-quarter profits.
The sourcing is thin. Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst says Trump told him in a phone interview Monday that if Oman "gets in the way, we'll bomb the s**t out of them." Yingst has not published any audio recording of the remarks. The New York Post and Breitbart both reported the quote verbatim; neither noted the absence of a recording. The Guardian buried the unverified nature of the claim entirely, presenting the threat as established fact while leading with the pocketbook damage to American families.
What's not in dispute: Oman has been playing both sides. The sultanate has long positioned itself as a neutral mediator between the U.S. and Iran, but in June, Oman and Iran announced a "Strait of Hormuz Committee" to impose tolls on commercial shipping through the waterway — the same waterway where roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil transits. Iran demanded a system where outbound traffic runs along Oman's coast and incoming traffic falls under Iranian control. Oman's foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, signaled openness to collecting "voluntary" fees, claiming they were needed for safe navigation. Trump had already threatened Oman in May over the same scheme, warning he would "blow up" the country if it didn't "behave," according to the Post.
The cost to ordinary Americans is staggering. Over six months of war, households have shelled out an extra $477 on average in elevated gas prices — a cumulative $56.4 billion transfer from working people's wallets, according to the congressional Joint Economic Committee. Meanwhile, eight of the biggest oil companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell — booked $90 billion in profits in just the first full quarter of the war. That is $700,000 every minute. Follow the money: who profits from a blocked strait and endless conflict? Not the American driver.
Trump told Yingst he has "no time schedule" and is "not in a hurry" to end the standoff, insisting Iran must "put up the white flag of surrender." He claimed a "direct backchannel" to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exists for negotiations, even as Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei insisted Monday that no talks are happening and that the 60-day diplomatic deadline under the June memorandum of understanding was rendered irrelevant by U.S. violations.
Then there's the territorial claim. Trump said at a Long Island rally Friday that he plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz "a territory of the United States" after the war. Neither Breitbart nor The Guardian touched that remark; the Post noted it in passing. A sitting president promising to annex the world's most critical oil chokepoint as U.S. territory — that deserves more than a shrug.
The pattern is clear: unverified claims stoke the case for escalation, oil companies cash in, and nobody in Washington is asked to define the U.S. interest, the cost, or the exit. Six months in, there is still no answer to the basic question — what does victory look like, and when do American families stop paying for it?
