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.”
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.
RelatedTRT World – Trump rejects Tehran’s Hormuz closure claim, says US hit Iran ‘very hard’
