Iran is determined to win international recognition of its control over the Strait of Hormuz and ability to levy fees on ​ships entering or leaving the Gulf even if it has to do so by force, two senior Iranian sources said.

Under this month’s interim deal with the U.S. to end their three-month conflict, ‌Iran agreed to let ships pass through the Strait for 60 days without charge. But it believes the wording of the agreement allows it to keep control of which ships may pass and which route they take through the narrow waterway, Reuters reported.

It is also determined to secure lasting formal acceptance of this control once the interim phase expires, and its negotiators will not move to other areas of dispute in ongoing peace talks with Washington until that has been agreed, the sources said.

If the interim deal ends ​without being extended, Iran would start charging ships for passage in mid-August, though it has not yet laid out any list of what fees it will charge or how. Iran closed the Strait ​when the war began and Iranian officials have said authorities charged some vessels navigation or other fees to leave the Gulf.

Any lasting Iranian ⁠control over the Strait of Hormuz, with formalities and fees for ships, would add costs, delays and risks to all shipping through a waterway that before the war transported a fifth of global energy supplies plus other critical ​goods.

Passage through the Strait was never previously subject to fees and Tehran’s position runs directly counter to U.S. interpretations of the interim Memorandum of Understanding agreed on June 17, and to Washington’s stance on what the ultimate ​post-war arrangements will be.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that there would be no tolls charged for passage through the Strait unless Washington decided to impose them itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a meeting with Gulf states that no country had the right to block shipping or impose fees or tolls for passage through an international waterway.

Iran interprets the interim deal as meaning it can maintain control over all passage through the Strait, though without collecting fees during the interim phase of the ​deal, and that while it has to discuss arrangements with Gulf states, it is not obliged to reach an agreement with them, the sources said.

Oman stretches along the southern coast of the Strait and Iran is ​planning talks with the sultanate to define transit paths through the waterway, Tehran said on Monday.

However, Iran shot at four ships over the weekend that tried to traverse the Strait on the Omani side without first getting Iranian permission, triggering a brief ‌but intense ⁠exchange of fire with the United States.

One of the senior officials said Iran would not let the situation return to the pre-war status quo. Instead, it believes new arrangements must govern Hormuz including Iran choosing how vessels enter and leave the Strait, holding the right to deny entry to any it suspects of threatening Iranian security, and charging fees for compulsory services it provides.

Iran is ready to impose its demands on the Strait through force if there is no agreement by other countries to accept its terms, the official added, saying Tehran would not back down even if it led to renewed – and intensified – confrontation ​with the U.S.

The second senior Iranian official said that ​having survived what Tehran had seen as its ⁠biggest potential threat – a war with the U.S. and Israel – Iran believed it had a “historic opportunity” to secure a long-term advantage.

Ship-owning countries would eventually accept Iranian management of the Strait because of the growing cost of the dispute, and Washington would accept it to ensure uninterrupted global energy supplies, the official added.

However, Iran may be overplaying its hand and miscalculating how far Washington would be willing to accept what would be seen as an enormous concession, said ​Ali Ansari, professor of modern ⁠history at St Andrews University, read the report.

“The prospect of this conflict reigniting is much higher than people think because neither side thinks they’ve lost,” he said.

Neither Iran nor the U.S. is a signatory of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that designates Hormuz as an international strait, although Oman, which stretches along its southern coast, is.

While the waterway is split between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman, its status as an international strait under the convention requires ⁠free passage.

The convention ​is widely regarded, including by the U.S., as customary international law.

It is also the agreement under which Iran could claim its territorial ​waters extend 12 miles rather than the mere 3 miles off its shore under other maritime conventions, said Chris O’Flaherty, a former British navy captain and specialist in naval warfare and law. The Strait of Hormuz is just over 20 miles wide at its narrowest ​point.

“This is an intensely political matter in which most people think international law is settled. However, Iran has decided to challenge that,” O’Flaherty said.

Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the ​other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.

Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday ‌launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.

Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.

The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of ​the conflict.

The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while ​talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, ⁠was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be ​reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

About an hour after Trump’s post, ​the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.

The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press ​TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.

A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US ​sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.

Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty ‌and security. It ⁠urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.

US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at ​Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait ​of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will ⁠remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”

Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun ​to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began ​leaving through the strait over ⁠the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.

Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.

In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the ⁠Nabatieh area.

Iran ​accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded ​in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.

Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it ​has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.

The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ​ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.

U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone ‌storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.

Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.

Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel ​and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would ​be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.

Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf ⁠states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.

“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by ​Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military said it ​would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.

Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.

“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” ​Vance said on X.

Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik ​toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.

On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at ‌eastern Hormozgan as ⁠saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.

The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.

“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. ​If the aggression is repeated, our response will ​be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.

The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a ​commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.

“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted ​on X.

Before the renewed outbreak ⁠of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.

Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.

Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to ⁠assuage concerns ​about a spike in global food prices.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies ​about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser ​to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.