Trump sought to exert strategic control over the waterway responsible for the transportation of 20 per cent of global oil supplies before the war, hoping to take away Iran's key source of economic leverage in the fighting.

The president added that he has “instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”

Trump also said the US was ready to “finish up” Iran at the “appropriate moment," stressing that Tehran's nuclear ambitions were at the core of the failure to end the war.