WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday that there were no talks ongoing with Iran, leaving the simmering conflict in the Middle East and control of the Strait of Hormuz stuck in limbo.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump posted on his social media platform.

On Monday, after the memorandum of understanding that the United States and Iran signed in June expired, the president said he would not extend it. The agreement had given the parties a 60-day window to negotiate a lasting peace deal.

But the ceasefire had been repeatedly violated, with intermittent clashes ongoing and both sides having declared it defunct.

On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates said Iran fired two ballistic missiles into its territory, the Islamic Republic’s first confirmed attack on the Gulf nation since May. Both missiles fell into the sea and only one reached UAE’s waters, according to the country’s Defense Ministry.

Iran has not commented on the attack, which followed Tehran’s recent strikes against UAE-linked ships.

Brent crude was above $91 a barrel Tuesday as prospects dimmed for a swift reopening of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited before the war.

Trump is demanding Iran drop efforts to toll vessels crossing the waterway, while Tehran has said it will govern traffic in conjunction with Oman. The U.S. president claimed that the strait is “open and operating” despite shipping data showing otherwise, citing the naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The president also asserted that “all water mines have been removed or detonated,” a claim European officials said they are skeptical of due to the painstaking and time-consuming nature of the mine-clearing process. A planned European mission has yet to get underway.

Tuesday’s declarations from the president marked the latest example of the mixed messages coming from the administration about the state of the war.

The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been active in diplomatic efforts, told Fox News on Tuesday that conversations with “different areas of the Iranian government” were ongoing.

“There’s really not a lot of trust between America and Iran after all these years of not having these relations and dialogues,” he said. “But we are having very positive and active conversations.”

Several ships have been attacked along the route linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea in recent days. Traffic is a fraction of its pre-war levels. On Tuesday, the United Kingdom said a vessel heading out of the strait was struck by a projectile that damaged its engine room, resulting in one casualty.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s lead negotiator with the United States, told lawmakers on Tuesday that Hormuz won’t reopen before the U.S. lifts a port blockade, releases frozen assets, removes oil sanctions and ceases all its military operations — as it agreed to do in June.

“The regime is willing to endure great hardship, they are willing to inflict great hardship on the population, in order to stay in power,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg Television. “We are in what I call an economic war of attrition to see who can endure longer, to see who can force the other side to make concessions.”

The war erupted on Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran and sparked parallel conflicts that have embroiled much of the Middle East. Trump has repeatedly said his primary objective is to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which the nation’s officials deny pursuing.

Trump on Monday said the U.S. retains leverage over Iran and reiterated his idea of declaring Hormuz an American territory. His insistence that the U.S. has total control over the strait is directly at odds with the stance of Iranian officials.

Iran and Oman are negotiating a deal on how Hormuz should be managed, but the U.S. isn’t part of those discussions. In a phone interview with Fox News, Trump warned that if “Oman gets in the way we’ll bomb the s--- out of them,” without giving any further details, repeating a similar threat he made in May. Oman isn’t a formal U.S. military ally, but has served as a close security partner.

Trump has struggled to find an off-ramp to a war that has driven up gasoline prices and grown increasingly unpopular in the United States, threatening to erode support for Republicans in November’s midterm elections by keeping the war in voters’ minds.

Jake Sullivan, who served as national security adviser under President Joe Biden, criticized Trump’s move to war in comments on Bloomberg Television, saying Trump had been pushed into the conflict by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

“President Trump, in his first term, wouldn’t do it,” he said. “President Trump this time around did say, ‘Yes, I will go ahead and start that war,’ and we’re all seeing the consequences of that.”

Trump and his officials have pledged to ratchet up economic pressure on Iran to force it to capitulate, but it’s unclear what measures are under consideration. The Islamic Republic has withstood decades of sanctions.

The war has damaged much of Iran’s industrial capacity, severely curtailed its crude exports and sent inflation skyrocketing. Ghalibaf acknowledged that Iranian citizens had legitimate economic grievances, but said they should prioritize maintaining national unity.

Elsewhere in the region, Israel’s military has staged strikes that it said targeted Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza over recent days, while Yemen-based Houthi rebels have attacked ships in the Red Sea. All three militant groups are backed by Iran.

Meanwhile, Kushner in his capacity as peace envoy visited the Middle East this week in an effort to accelerate a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, holding talks with mediators and the leaders of Israel and Hamas.

Kushner assured Netanyahu that his military won’t be compelled to leave Gaza until Hamas fully disarms, according to an official with knowledge of the talks. Hamas has insisted that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territory before it gives up its weapons, although Agence France-Presse on Tuesday cited the group as saying it remained committed to the truce.

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(With assistance from Sherif Tarek, Sonya Dymova, Joe Mathieu, Kailey Leinz and Matt Shirley.)

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