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Donald Trump has rejected Iranian claims to have closed off the strait of Hormuz as both sides battled for control over the waterway, leaving a ceasefire agreed last month at the point of collapse.

US forces said they had attacked 140 targets in Iran on Saturday night and Sunday morning after Tehran struck and disabled a container ship in the strait, whose transit it said had not been approved. In a statement, US Central Command (Centcom) said its targets had included missile and drone sites, naval facilities, ammunition depots, communication networks and surveillance locations.

Iran on Sunday struck back with drone and missile strikes it said were aimed at US interests across the Gulf, with reports of aerial attacks in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement declaring the strait of Hormuz closed, although US Centcom said some ships were continuing to cross the waterway.

“Iran does not control the strait. Traffic is flowing,” the Centcom headquarters, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, said on X.

Later in the day, Trump said US forces were keeping the strait open by force.

“It’s open. We bombed the hell out of them last night,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme on Sunday. “They’re very, very evil and sick people. We had meetings with them. They agreed to a deal yesterday, a perfect deal for us. No nuclear, no this, no that, no nothing. They gave up everything. And then after that, they left the room. And then within an hour, they launched a drone at a ship.”

The US-run Joint Maritime Information Center said traffic was transiting the strait at “reduced levels”. The White House did not provide any more details of Trump’s claimed deal on Saturday, and Iran did not refer to any talks.

A US-Iranian memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on 17 June extended a ceasefire in the war by 60 days to allow the restoration of trade through the strait and create breathing space for talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme and sanctions relief, the main points of contention between Iran and the west.

Apart from some indirect technical talks, those negotiations have failed to materialise, and fighting has continued between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was supposed to be covered by the agreement.

The MoU started to unravel when Iran attacked three commercial vessels on Monday night as they were crossing the strait along a southern route next to the Omani coast that the Iranians said they had not approved. This drew US missile attacks in response, beginning almost a week of tit-for-tat exchanges.

Tehran is determined that any long-term settlement in the region recognises its control over the strait, which it seized soon after the US-Israel attack on Iran in February.

On Sunday, Mohsen Rezaee, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was quoted in state media as saying: “This strategic passage is more important than dozens of atomic bombs, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will protect it.”

In the latest round of strikes, Iran hit a container ship, the Cypriot-flagged GFS Galaxy, ​which was travelling through the​ strait on a southerly route along the Omani shoreline, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations centre, a British military body​. The vessel was struck, disabled and its crew forced to take to lifeboats. The Indian government said 10 of its nationals from the ship had been rescued but that one remained missing.

In response, Centcom said on Saturday night its forces had struck 140 Iranian military targets “to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial vessels freely transiting the ​strait”.

Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attacks across the region were apparently aimed at US bases in neighbouring Arab countries.

The IRGC claimed to have destroyed “the logistical support centres for naval vessels and the refuelling facilities for US aircraft carriers at the port of Duqm in Oman”. Without confirming details on the damage, Oman condemned the attack, which came just hours after the sultanate hosted an Iranian delegation for talks on security in the strait.

Referring to the strait of Hormuz, the IRGC said several vessels had “disregarded our warnings and instructions to correct their course and proceed along the approved route”. One of them “was struck by a warning shot and brought to a stop”, it added.

The strait would remain closed until the “end of US interference”, the IRGC said, adding that it would consider targeting “additional enemy bases in the region” if it faced more American attacks.

The return of hostilities has rattled global markets, though the price for Brent crude oil was $75 a barrel going into the weekend, well down from wartime highs of more than $120 and close to its prewar average . The latest price appears to reflect traders’ belief that the US and Iran want to avoid a return to full-scale war, and that the global economy is adapting to the prolonged uncertainty over the strait.