Donald Trump said on Tuesday that there are no talks or conversations with Iran and that the U.S. Naval blockade of the country remains in “full force and effect,” even as he wrote that the Strait of Hormuz was “open and operating.”
That message landed while air defenses detected two Iranian missiles fired toward the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, a fresh reminder that the Strait of Hormuz remains the main flashpoint in the exchange of strikes between Iran and the U.S. Both missiles fell into the water off the coast of the UAE in its territorial waters, according to the UAE Ministry of Defense, and residents in Dubai were told to seek shelter after air defense systems detected a missile threat.
The timing matters because the waterway is not just symbolic. The U.S. and Iran are still trying to bridge a gap over the Strait of Hormuz, after Trump announced major combat operations against Iran on Feb. 28 and delegations from the two countries opened negotiations in June on a war-ending deal tied to a memorandum of understanding. Those talks have not produced an agreement, and the exchange of strikes has continued.
Trump’s wording also left a basic question hanging: how can a passage be “open and operating” if a blockade is still, in his words, in “full force and effect”? In practice, the claim reads less like a military announcement than a statement of pressure, because the facts on the ground show traffic, threats and interceptions still moving through the same narrow channel rather than a sealed-off strait.
There is another contradiction beneath the headline. Trump said there are no talks or conversations now or scheduled in the future, yet he previously acknowledged backchannel discussions with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. reported that he described those contacts in an off-camera interview, while Tehran denied such talks were happening, and Axios reported that Iraqi Kurdish officials were helping to mediate discussions. Jared Kushner added that Iran is “not showing any interest” in making a deal that makes sense for the U.S., even as he said conversations across different parts of the Iranian government are “more robust than it’s maybe ever been.”
For now, the clearest reading is that neither side has settled on the terms that would end the standoff, and the Strait of Hormuz is still being used as both leverage and warning. Until that changes, Trump’s Tuesday post is best understood not as the end of the fight, but as a sign that the fight over who controls the message — and the waterway — is still on.
