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With the flurry of questions about Iran’s motives and the United States’ intelligence, even the president appeared to be treading carefully. While he said the United States would not allow Iran to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil shipments, Mr. Trump insisted he was not looking for war. He even reopened the door to some kind of engagement with the Iranian leadership.

“I’m ready when they are,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview on Friday with “Fox & Friends,” the Fox News morning program. “Whenever they’re ready, it’s O.K. In the meantime, I’m in no rush.”

Mr. Trump’s remarks were more cautious than those of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a day earlier, and they captured a tension in the administration. The president has signaled a desire to reduce American involvement in wars and engage in diplomacy even as he has taken aggressive positions in confronting rivals like Iran. His more hard-line advisers, including Mr. Pompeo and the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, are pushing for the United States to tighten the pressure.

Iran accused the United States and its allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, of seizing on the attacks to “sabotage diplomacy” as it waged economic warfare on the country. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, said on Friday on Twitter that the United States accused Iran without “a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence.”

American military and intelligence officials expressed a high level of confidence in Tehran’s involvement in the attacks. While the black-and-white video of a group of men on a boat pulling a mine off one of the tankers is the most public evidence, military and intelligence officials said that other streams of intelligence showed Iran’s intent to demonstrate control over the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

“There’s no one else in the region that really attacks ships in the water — it’s not an easy thing to do,” Vice Adm. Kevin M. Donegan, a former Fifth Fleet commander, said in a telephone interview.