Trump says US no longer needs Iran deal, redirects Vance

President Donald Trump says the United States no longer needs a deal with Iran, pulling Vice President JD Vance away from efforts to negotiate an end to the war as fighting and disputes over the Strait of Hormuz continue.

Trump said Thursday on Truth Social that he had asked Vance to focus his “complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.”

“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”

Vance had been working with intermediaries to restart talks over the conflict, which began with joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February. He led US negotiations in Islamabad in April and has engaged mediators in Qatar and Pakistan. The Guardian reported that he also sent a letter to Iranian official Mohsen Rezaei seeking renewed direct negotiations.

A June memorandum of understanding with Iran collapsed over differences about its terms, particularly control of Hormuz, according to Al Jazeera. The waterway carried one-fifth of global oil supplies in peacetime. Iran effectively closed it after the strikes, driving up fuel costs worldwide.

The two countries remain at odds over the strait. The United States maintains a blockade of Iranian ports and has mostly reopened Hormuz to shipping, including oil shipments, The Guardian reported. But Al Jazeera reported that at least 12 tankers had been hit in the past 12 days. Iran says it controls passage through the waterway and has told approved ships to use a route closer to its coastline.

Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told Al Jazeera that Tehran had sent Washington a seven-condition proposal through Qatari mediators for a ceasefire and the strait’s reopening. Its demands include ending the US blockade, lifting sanctions, releasing frozen Iranian funds and formally ending the war. “The ball is now in the American court,” he said. The United States has previously insisted on an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme before accepting those demands; Iran wants to negotiate that issue separately.

Trump has played down the prospect of renewed large-scale US strikes. At the White House on Thursday, he said Gulf leaders had asked him to hold off. “At this point, taking the military action doesn’t seem to be a very necessary thing – but we’re locked and loaded, ready to go for any reason,” he said.

The danger of further attacks remains. On Friday, Iran said it had destroyed a US early-warning radar system in Bahrain in retaliation for an air attack on a telecommunications tower in southern Iran, Al Jazeera reported.

Vance has blamed the war for Republicans’ midterm election losses. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote on X. Trump has acknowledged that the conflict raised fuel prices and contributed to the defeat, while defending the strikes as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.