Iran on Saturday denied US claims that it agreed to transfer its enriched uranium abroad and signalled that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed again due to Washington's ongoing naval blockade.

On Friday, President Donald Trump said the US would maintain a naval blockade on Iranian ports, imposed earlier this week, until a final agreement between the two countries is reached.

The blockade was imposed in response to Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran ended on Thursday following a US-brokered 10-day ceasefire to halt Israel's war in Lebanon.

However, Iran on Saturday appeared to reverse course after Trump's comments, saying passage through the waterway would remain restricted as long as the US continued its naval blockade.

"With the continuation of the blockade, the Strait of Hormuz will not remain open," parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X. "What they call a naval blockade will definitely be met with an appropriate response from Iran."

The US Central Command said overnight it had directed at least 21 ships to turn around since the blockade began this week.

Before Iran signalled it would reassert control of the Strait of Hormuz, more than a dozen mostly non-Western-owned vessels passed through the waterway on Friday and early Saturday, following coordination with Tehran.

However, other ships approaching the strait later on Saturday turned back after Iran announced it was reimposing restrictions. Some vessels reported receiving radio messages from Iranian naval forces informing them that the Strait of Hormuz had been "shut again", according to Reuters.

The Strait of Hormuz is a key hydrocarbon chokepoint, through which about a fifth of the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas flows.

The closure of the waterway has resulted in the largest supply loss in history: more than 10m barrels of oil per day and a 20 percent cut in global liquefied natural gas supply, the International Energy Agency has said.

Enriched uranium

Trump on Friday also claimed that Washington would work with Tehran to bring enriched uranium to the US. 

"We're going to get it together. We're going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery… We'll bring it back to the United States," Trump said.

He referred to "nuclear dust" - a reference to what he believes remains after US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June last year - and added that it would be retrieved "very soon".

Iran firmly denied any such transfer. 

"Iran's enriched uranium is not going to be transferred anywhere. Transferring uranium to the United States has not been an option for us," Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson, told state television.