President Donald Trump said on Thursday the US no longer needed a deal with Iran, claiming that “those days have long since passed”.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said Vice President JD Vance would instead turn his attention to what he described as corruption and crime in Democratic-led states.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, hundreds of billions of dollars, and we’ve got their Strait,” he wrote.
The President's comments marked a shift from recent weeks, when he had repeatedly said the war would end after the midterm elections and that a deal with Iran remained possible.
The results of the November 3 vote dealt a bruising defeat to Mr Trump's Republican Party, which lost its majority in Congress to Democrats.
Voters gave the state of the economy and the rising cost of living as their main concerns.
After Mr Trump launched the war on Iran alongside Israel on February 28, Iran moved to choke off maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which about 20 per cent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas shipments passed before the war began.
The disruption has driven up global fuel costs and contributed to higher prices for everyday goods in the US and beyond.
Oil prices rose around the time of Mr Trump's latest comments, erasing an earlier decline after Saudi Arabia increased its output to near prewar levels.
The US President had previously said the price of fuel would go down after the conflict with Iran ends.
On Tuesday, he said a resumption of military action against Iran was “quite unlikely” for now, and warned that Washington remained “locked and loaded” should developments in the Middle East change.
On Thursday, Mr Trump said Mr Vance, who had been involved in contact with Iran, would instead devote his “complete and total attention” to what he described as large-scale corruption in US states including Minnesota, California and Illinois.
