File Photo: Cargo ships and tankers are seen off the coast of the city of Fujairah, in the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Emirate. AFP
Iran had agreed to temporarily reopen the strait, through which one-fifth of the world's oil usually passes, as part of a two-week truce.
However, it closed the Strait again on Wednesday in response to Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon, in which it killed at least 200 people, which Tehran said violated the ceasefire agreement.
Semiofficial news agencies in Iran published a chart on Thursday suggesting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council (IRGC) put sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz during the war, as uncertainty hangs over a two-week ceasefire, and further negotiations are expected in Islamabad.
"All ships intending to transit the Strait of Hormuz are hereby notified that to comply with the principles of maritime safety and to be protected from possible collisions with sea mines...they should take alternative routes for traffic in the Strait of Hormuz," the IRGC stated.
The statement shared instructions for an alternative entry and exit route through the strait.
The shaky ceasefire has been largely holding between the US and Iran, although Tehran and Washington have offered vastly different explanations of the initial terms.
Iran said it had won agreement that it would control the Strait of Hormuz, charge tolls, and enrich uranium, while Trump said the deal called for the strait to be reopened and Iran to hand over its uranium stockpile.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said Tehran will allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in accordance with “international norms and international law” once the US ends its “aggression” in the Middle East and Israel stops attacking Lebanon.
Khatibzadeh told the BBC on Thursday that Iran had closed the strait after US ally Israel committed an “intentional grave violation of the ceasefire.”
“You cannot have a cake and eat it at the same time. That was the message that Iran sent quite clearly, crystal-clearly, to Washington and to the Oval Office last night,” he said. “Definitely, we are going to provide security for safe passage, and it is going to happen after the United States actually withdraws this aggression.”
“I think that we have shown to everybody that energy security is pivotal for Iran, is pivotal for this body of water in the Persian Gulf, and we are going to abide by the international norms and international law,” he added.
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