European warships approaching the Strait of Hormuz are legitimate targets, Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal affairs Kazem Gharibabadi said, Imna reported on July 28.

The remarks are the most explicit threat Tehran has made against European naval forces since France and the UK announced deployments around the waterway in May, moving Iran's stated position from opposing their presence to declaring them targets. Gharibabadi also set out as policy that the strait will not revert to its pre-war condition, a position that bears directly on tanker war-risk premiums and on Gulf export routing.

Speaking in a televised interview, Gharibabadi said Iran's policy was that the strait should never return to its pre-war state. "If the Strait of Hormuz returns to the situation before the war, our success in the war will not be complete," he said.

He said Iran had opted against opening the southern channel of the strait because doing so would have left it unable to exercise sovereignty there.

Tehran was not deterred by any consequence of consolidating its control, he said, including a resumption of the war.

"We have discovered a new defensive capacity called the Strait of Hormuz," Gharibabadi said, describing the waterway as part of Iran's national security and a defensive capability for the country. He added that Iran had upgraded its defensive tools.

France and the UK announced warship deployments near the strait in May, drawing a warning from Gharibabadi of a decisive and immediate response. He said at the time that the strait was not the common property of powers outside the region and that determining its legal arrangements was Iran's right as a coastal state.

Iran closed the strait to shipping linked to the US and Israel following strikes on Iranian targets. Washington began an air campaign on March 19 aimed at reopening it and imposed a naval blockade of Iran on April 13.

A French-led European monitoring mission, European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz, has operated in the area since 2020, with its military arm headquartered at the French naval base in Abu Dhabi. Around a fifth of the world's oil supply passes through the strait.