Iran and the United States remain at ​loggerheads over efforts to agree a permanent end to the war in the Gulf, according to a senior Iranian source, who said there ‌had been no progress in talks to revive the interim deal agreed in June and define a time frame to implement it, Reuters reported.

The comments came as U.S. President Donald Trump issued yet another broadside against Iran’s leaders, dealing a further blow to hopes for a resolution to the crisis, following new attacks on shipping in the region on Tuesday.

The deal agreed in June declared an “immediate and permanent ​termination of military operations on all fronts”, but quickly unravelled, with Trump saying it was “over” on July 7 and Iran’s foreign ministry declaring it “suspended” ​a week later.

The U.S. accuses Iran of failing to honor an agreement under the deal to reopen the vital Strait ⁠of Hormuz shipping route. Tehran says Washington has reneged on its commitments, including lifting a blockade of Iranian ports and releasing frozen Iranian assets.

“One of the issues ​that is being discussed via mediators is the U.S. returning to the interim agreement and defining a time frame for implementing the commitments. There has been absolutely no ​progress on this issue,” the Iranian source said.

Trump said on Wednesday that the U.S. has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz.

But the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the body Iran set up to manage the waterway, said it remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted.

“Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer,” ​Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Throughout the conflict, Trump has alternated between threats of escalation and claims that a peace deal is imminent.

Thousands ​of people have been killed in the conflict, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, read the report.

Iran has struck U.S. assets and ‌infrastructure in ⁠countries including Oman, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The June interim ceasefire agreement set a 60-day period, extendable by mutual consent, within which Iran and the U.S. were expected to reach a final deal limiting Tehran’s nuclear program and lifting U.S. sanctions.

The Iranian source dismissed a report on Wednesday from Turkey’s Anadolu news agency that quoted Pakistani government sources as saying they had agreed to extend that 60-day period.

“There is no talk of an extension because, from Iran’s perspective, ​there is no period that began and ​therefore nothing to extend. The United ⁠States violated the interim agreement 48 hours after it was reached and withdrew from it a few days later,” the source told Reuters.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman and the entrance to the Gulf, ​handled a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flow before the war.

Benchmark Brent crude futures have surged ​since the start of ⁠the war in February, hitting a peak of $126 a barrel, roughly 75% above pre-war levels, with choppy trade reflecting concerns over disruptions to Gulf oil supplies and shifting signals on peace talks.

On Tuesday, in separate incidents, a suspected and a U.S. Navy MH-60 ⁠helicopter fired ​two Hellfire missiles to , the U.S. military said.

Oil ​prices rose but then steadied in volatile trading on Wednesday, after forecasters cut projections for 2026 oil demand. Brent crude futures were trading at around $88 a barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude at around $83 ​a barrel.

The U.S. and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis reported separate attacks on shipping on Tuesday as prospects for ending the Iran war appeared to dim, with Tehran saying the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed unless ​Washington accepts its conditions.

The attacks, in the Gulf of Oman leading to the strait and at the entrance to the Red Sea — both vital chokepoints for global oil supplies — come as ‌the war shows no signs of ending despite repeated assertions from U.S. President Donald Trump of a deal being imminent, Reuters reported.

Oil prices gained and global shares retreated amid renewed pessimism about a quick end to the conflict. Brent crude futures climbed 1.4% to settle at $88.91 per barrel and U.S. crude rose 1.3% to $83.20.

At the southern end of the Red Sea, four crew members were killed in a suspected Houthi attack on a small cargo vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday, Yemen’s Transport Ministry said. Two ​Yemeni rescuers from an anti-Houthi military group were also killed, Yemen’s Coast Guard said.

The fatalities aboard the Egyptian-owned Tihamah would be the first deaths on shipping by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis since the Iran ​war began.

The Houthi-run news agency Saba reported that the group, which said last month it would impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, attacked ⁠a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It did not name the ship, and there was no immediate Saudi response to the report.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said a U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter fired ​two Hellfire missiles to disable the steering gear of a Panama-flagged cargo ship.

The ship ignored repeated warnings to stop violating a naval blockade on Iranian ports, the U.S. Central Command said. Maritime sources told Reuters the ship was ​hit off Pakistan while sailing into the Gulf of Oman.

STEPPED UP RHETORIC

Both Iran and the United States have stepped up rhetoric in the past two days.

Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, said on Tuesday that the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route will remain closed unless the U.S. accepts Iran’s conditions to end the war – the release of Iran’s frozen assets and an end to conflicts throughout the region, including in Lebanon and Gaza.

That followed a new demand from Trump on Monday that Iran should pay ​compensation for people killed in 50 years of wars, attacks and protests.

Throughout the conflict, Trump has alternated between threats of escalation and claims that a peace deal is imminent.

In an interview released late on Monday, he ​suggested the uncertainty could last for a while, saying he might just “bop along” and let Tehran fail economically, or hit them “really, really hard.”

“I’m sort of negotiating,” Trump told Real America’s Voice. “They’re very devious negotiators.”

Speaking to reporters after a visit to ‌Ohio on Tuesday, ⁠Trump said “Iran is going fine, going just absolutely fine.”

“We totally control the Strait of Hormuz … Nobody else, only us,” he said.

“At some point, maybe they’ll do something and then they get blown away,” he said of Iran. “But right now, we’re in a very good position. We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years, really 51 if you think about it … and they’re no longer the bully of the Middle East.”

Asked about an incident in which he switched planes in Turkey last month because of worries over reports of a potential Iranian assassination threat, Trump suggested the alternative aircraft may have faced greater risk.

“That ​would be the plane I think that they would ​be more likely to go for,” he told ⁠reporters after The Washington Post broke the story about him secretly taking a military flight instead of Air Force One in an operation involving him being moved between aircraft in a catering truck.

“Any consequential president has a lot of threats,” Trump added. “I don’t worry about anything.”

The comments from Rezaei, appointed on Sunday as second-in-command of ​the body that coordinates Iran’s security and foreign policy, were the strongest indication the Strait of Hormuz would not reopen to shipping anytime soon. The waterway ​handled a fifth of global ⁠oil and liquefied natural gas flow before the war.

“As long as America does not change its behaviour and does not accept Iran’s conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened,” Rezaei said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

There was no immediate comment from Washington on Iran’s latest comments.

Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28.

Iran has struck U.S. assets and infrastructure in countries including ⁠Oman, Jordan, ​Kuwait, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Raising the prospect of further escalation, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an adviser to the commander ​of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said on Iranian state TV on Tuesday that the corps was developing the ability to carry out operations “on enemy soil.”

“We need to be able to move the operations to the enemy’s soil, whenever this is needed and ordered,” he said. “This is ​the characteristic of the offensive doctrine that has to be attained.”

A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday after a trial in absentia, ​convicting him of crimes including killings, torture, and ‌arbitrary arrest during the country’s nearly 14-year war.

It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in ​December 2024 that ended decades of his family’s ​iron-fisted rule over Syria, and the brutal war that ⁠killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Reuters reported.

Assad fled the capital ​Damascus as rebel fighters approached nearly two years ago, and ​is currently in Moscow.

In a trial of former government officials on Tuesday, a judge handed down a death sentence to Assad over the ​crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one ​person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.

Atef Najib, ‌a ⁠security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.

Assad, who was born in 1965, became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the family’s rule and ​the dominance ​of their Alawite ⁠sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and Syria’s status as an Iranian ally hostile ​to Israel and the U.S.

Shaped in its early ​years ⁠by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was defined by civil war, which spiralled out of the ⁠2011 ​Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy ​took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.