Iran has the exclusive right to manage traffic in the Strait of Hormuz under the preliminary peace deal signed with President Trump, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday, adding that attempts to circumvent its authority risk triggering more clashes like those seen in recent days.
The comments were among the clearest by a top official that Iran expects sole authority over the strait under the deal aimed at reopening the strategic waterway. They are at odds with American arguments that the deal doesn’t give Iran control and that navigation must be unimpeded in the international waterway.
Tehran’s assertion of authority followed several days of back-and-forth strikes with the U.S. that began when Iran attacked a ship trying to cross the strait by hugging the coast of Oman. Tehran, which wants ships to follow a separate course along its coastline, had warned ships against using that alternative route.
“Iran has little interest in watching its leverage wash away with every ship rerouted through Omani waters,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization.
The fighting has rattled shipowners and has thrown a budding reopening of the waterway into doubt, threatening the key achievement of Trump’s preliminary deal, which pushes discussions of more contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, into a second phase.
Those talks were expected to resume this weekend in Switzerland but have been stalled by the fighting, people familiar with the matter said.
“The management and full restoration of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s responsibility,” Araghchi said, according to state media. “No other country or entity has any responsibility or authority in this matter.”
The deal signed by Trump earlier in June assigns responsibility for opening the strait to Iran. It says “the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” and that Iran, in consultation with others in the region, will determine the terms for the future of administration and maritime services of the strait.
But Trump’s deal also says military obstacles should be cleared and traffic should resume immediately.
America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, said the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate further attacks on ships.
“If the Iranian regime thinks for a second that President Trump is going to sit by, stand by, while Iran continues to attack international shipping without a response or our bases without a response, they’re sadly mistaken,” he said on Fox News. “And they saw that loud and clear over the last few nights.”
Iran struck two vessels in recent days, a containership and a tanker carrying oil from Qatar, a mediator in the talks with the U.S. The U.S. responded with attacks on Iranian communications, drone and missile sites along the coast of the strait. Iran then attacked Kuwait and Bahrain.
“The U.S. is testing Iran’s resolve,” said Mohamed Amersi, an Iran expert and member of the Global Advisory Council of the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. The escalation has been managed thus far, he said.
Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking ships early in the war. The U.S. military guided a number of ships through the chokepoint, but has struggled to deprive Iran of the ability to threaten shipping, keeping traffic at a fraction of prewar levels, when a fifth of the world’s oil moved through the strait.
The U.S. has repeatedly pounded sites along the Hormuz coast, but Iran continues to land attacks on ships when it chooses to escalate.
Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com