WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump reiterated that the U.S. and Iran are maintaining diplomatic talks, even after an earlier skirmish in the Arabian Sea spooked oil markets amid heightened tensions between the two countries.

“We are negotiating with them right now” and “they’d like to do something,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday. “They had a chance to do something a while ago and it didn’t work out, and we did Midnight Hammer,” he said, referring to the June U.S. military strike in Iran.

Earlier Tuesday, a U.S. F-35C warplane shot down a drone in self-defense as the unmanned aircraft “aggressively approached” the USS Abraham Lincoln with “unclear intent,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement. CentCom said no American service members were harmed and no U.S. equipment was damaged.

Oil prices spiked to a session-high on the report as investors weighed the risk of a broader escalation in the Middle East, which provides about a third of the world’s crude. Prices pared some of those gains after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed U.S.-Iran talks involving Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff are still scheduled for Friday.

“As for the president, he remains committed to always pursuing diplomacy first, but in order for diplomacy to work, of course, it takes two to tango,” she said on Fox News. She added that meetings later this week “are still scheduled as of right now, but of course, the president has always a range of options on the table — and that includes the use of military force.”

The drone incident follows weeks of Trump’s ratcheting up pressure on Iran. The U.S. president has threatened airstrikes over Tehran’s violent crackdown on Iranian protesters, and repeatedly has cited a U.S. Navy “armada” approaching the Middle East as leverage to force Iran to curb its nuclear program.

Trump on Monday signaled there could be a new nuclear deal, while warning that “bad things would happen” if talks don’t yield progress.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said the Islamic Republic is ready for diplomacy but urged restraint in “threats, intimidation or pressure” from the U.S.

The downing of the drone came just hours after an oil tanker that’s part of a U.S.-military fuel procurement program was hailed by small armed ships in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast, underscoring renewed risks to maritime traffic in the region.

“These moves risk pushing President Trump off the diplomatic path and back toward a military option,” said Becca Wasser, defense lead for Bloomberg Economics. “That’s a dangerous play at a time when the U.S. has amassed significant firepower in the Middle East.”

The incident also follows a warning last week from CentCom, which cautioned Iran against overflying U.S. vessels or training weapons at American forces. In that Friday evening statement, the command acknowledged Iran’s right to conduct a live-fire naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, but also urged the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to do so “in a manner that is safe, professional and avoids unnecessary risk to freedom of navigation for international maritime traffic.”

In the separate incident that CentCom said occurred hours after the drone was shot down on Tuesday, it alleged Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “harassed” a U.S. merchant vessel transiting in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. Two IRGC boats and a drone approached the U.S. vessel “at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker” before a U.S. guided-missile destroyer in the area escorted the U.S. vessel to safety, CentCom reported.

As the White House continued on Tuesday to signal an openness to talks while retaining military options against Iran, analysts noted that the volume of assets sent into the region could tie U.S .hands to act sooner than later.

“Trump has sent a lot of military hardware into the region with a purpose,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “There’s a finite limit of time that I think you can deploy these assets in the region — because it’s costly, but also there are other contingencies that America needs to be prepared for.”

Katulis raised the possibility of a “fig leaf” that buys time for Trump to pursue diplomatic talks and avoid a risky operation. But with talks still days away, the risk remains for more miscalculations and military clashes.

“We’ve been here before — the Islamic Republic has previously used fast-attack craft as well as drones to harass and buzz U.S. vessels,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The difference is the stakes were never this high.”

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(With assistance from Jen Judson and Meghashyam Mali.)

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