President Donald Trump has said the US is reinstating a naval blockade on Iran, and would be reimbursed 20 percent on all cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump announced the blockade on Monday and said the process would begin immediately, without elaborating.
It came after Iran said it "does not and will not allow" the US to "interfere" in the management of the Strait of Hormuz, a key Middle East waterway through which approximately 20 percent of global energy is transported.
"We're going to keep the strait, and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that," Trump said in a phone interview on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" programme, earlier on Monday.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global oil supplies, has become one of the main battlegrounds of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Tehran's effective blockade of the strait and the US counter blockade — lifted after both sides signed a Pakistan and Qatar-mediated agreement — has driven up energy prices and heightened global inflation concerns.
Trump told the Fox News that the US would "become the guardian" of Hormuz and "get paid" for doing so.
"We're going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy. They're on our side, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing," he said.
'We're just going to hit them'
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.
