After announcing the waterway’s closure on Saturday following what it described as an unauthorised transit, Tehran said on Sunday that passage remained suspended, and that permits would be issued once “stability and calm” were restored.
“We had a deal. It was a done deal, and then they broke it. They always break it. We’ve had 10 deals with these people, and so we’re just going to hit them very hard,” Trump said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on Monday that the only way to restore regular shipping traffic through the strait was to end US military interventions in the waterway, and warned that “continued interference could lead to greater incidents in the global oil and gas sector.”
Tehran “will deal severely with any disruption and insecurity to the passage of commercial ships and tankers by the aggressive and bandit American army outside of Iran’s designated route and without the permission of the armed forces,” it vowed.
The Iranian military also warned countries of the region against cooperating with the US army.
Spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) also said that Tehran “will compel foreign powers and their allies to submit to the will of the Iranian nation.”
US and Iranian forces exchanged heavy missile and drone attacks over the weekend and into Monday, with Tehran saying it had struck US military facilities across the Gulf and kept the Strait of Hormuz closed, driving oil prices higher.
The latest exchanges mark a sharp escalation in both the pace and geographic reach of attacks over the past week, casting doubt on an interim US-Iranian agreement signed last month to reopen the strait and halt hostilities while the sides pursued a further 60 days of negotiations.
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