President Donald Trump shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during a meeting in the Oval Office about trade deals and security alliances on Aug. 25, 2025. The last time Trump met with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un was in 2019 at the at the Korean Demilitarized Zone.Alex Brandon/AP
President Trump spent the weekend turning on two US security partners. He ordered a cutback in joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator — and threatened to bomb Oman, one of the countries mediating between Washington and Tehran.
On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that based on his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” and the finances required, he ordered Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” annual joint military exercises with South Korea, designed to prepare against threats from North Korea. At the end of his post: “While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!”
And on Monday afternoon, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office a similar account of his conversation with South Korea President Lee Jae Myung on Iran. “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” Trump said.
Seoul is downplaying it. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the exercises began Monday as planned, and President Lee Jae Myung said the two governments had “maintained close coordination” on joint training and would keep doing so.
But the reversal is abrupt. Just three months ago, as the Associated Press noted, Hegseth praised South Korea for raising defense spending and “assuming primary responsibility for the security of the Korean Peninsula” — a shift he called proof of “alliance burden-sharing that all of America’s partners would do well to follow.” It’s the same pattern the administration ran on NATO members who declined to back the war on Iran.
Regarding Oman, Trump told Fox News on Monday that “if Oman gets in the way [of US-Iran negotiations], we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” Oman is reportedly close to an agreement with Iran to restore commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway that carried 20 percent of the world’s crude oil before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran began in February.
Oman is also a strategic partner of the US in the region and often acts as a diplomatic mediator between the US and Iran. The US holds a security agreement with Oman that allows it to access Omani airfield and port facilities for military purposes.
It looks like yet another time where Trump makes decisions built on personal squabbles rather than its critical security relationships.
