The US military said the drill had caused two bases with American troops in the region to go on heightened alert and said Tehran's missile launches were irresponsible.

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There have been periodic confrontations in the Gulf in recent years between the Guards and the US military, which has accused the Guards' navy of sending fast-attack boats to harass US warships as they pass the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran, which opposes the presence of US and Western navies in the Gulf, holds annual naval war games in phases in the strategic waterway, the conduit for some 30% of all crude and other oil liquids traded by sea.

"The final stage of the drill called 'Great Prophet 14' with the participation of the Guards Navy and Air Force has started in the areas of land, air, sea, and space in ... the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf," Iran's state TV reported.

The Guards, in a statement quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency, said its naval and air forces would use "missile, UAV and radar units" in the drill.

In a statement, the US military's Central Command said Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates were put on a heightened alert status out of an abundance of caution because an initial assessment showed a potential threat.

"The incident lasted for a matter of minutes, and an all-clear was declared after the threat indicator had passed," the military statement said.

Satellite images published on Monday showed Iran has moved a mock-up US aircraft carrier to the Strait, suggesting it will use the fake vessel for target practice in war games there.

Commander Rebecca Rebarich, spokeswoman for the US Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, said the US military was "always watchful of this type of irresponsible and reckless behavior by Iran in the vicinity of busy international waterways."

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But she said that "this exercise has not disrupted coalition operations in the area nor had any impacts to the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters."

The Guards in April said Tehran would destroy US warships if Iran's security is threatened in the Gulf. Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to block Hormuz if Iran is not able to export oil or if its nuclear sites are attacked.

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The seizure of commercial vessels and attacks on tankers near the Strait of Hormuz have unsettled shipping lanes that link Middle Eastern oil producers to global markets.

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The United States, which has increased its military forces in the region, has blamed Iran for blasts on several tankers near the strait, a charge Tehran denies.

Britain said on Monday it was joining the United States in a maritime security mission in the gulf to protect vessels after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker.

"Heightened military activity and increased political tensions in this region continue to pose serious threats to commercial vessels," the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) said in an advisory on Wednesday.

"Associated with these threats is a potential for miscalculation or misidentification that could lead to aggressive actions," it added.

Ships should also alert the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations in the event of any incident or suspicious activity. It warned they could face interference to their global positioning systems (GPS).

MARAD said in at least two incidents involving commercial vessels and Iran since May 2019 ships had reported interference with their GPS and "spoofed" communications from unknown entities falsely claiming to be US or other warships.

It advised crews to decline Iranian forces permission to board if the safety of the ship and crew would not be at risk but said they should not forcibly resist any boarding party.

Traffic through the strait, through which about a fifth of the world's oil passes, has become the focus for a standoff between Iran and the United States after President Donald Trump quit a 2015 nuclear pact and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

Iran says the responsibility of securing these waters lies with Tehran and other countries in the region.

"The maritime coalition that US is trying to form will create more instability and insecurity,"Iran's Defence Minister Amir Hatami was quoted as saying by Iran's Tasnim news agency on Thursday during phone calls with his counterparts from Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.

Washington is lobbying other nations to join the coalition along with Britain, which has the largest naval presence in the area after the United States.

Britain's P&O Cruises said it had canceled cruises around Dubai and the Gulf because of the increased tensions.

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Tensions have risen between Iran and the West since last year when the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal with Tehran.

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"Peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, war with Iran is the mother of all wars," Rouhani said at the Foreign Ministry in a speech which also praised Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after the United States imposed sanctions on him on July 31.

If the United States wants to have negotiations with Iran then it must lift all sanctions, Rouhani said, noting that Iran must be allowed to export oil.

Last month Iran seized the British tanker Stena Impero near the Strait of Hormuz for alleged marine violations, two weeks after British forces captured an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar for violating sanctions on Syria.

"A strait for a strait. It can't be that the Strait of Hormuz is free for you and the Strait of Gibraltar is not free for us," Rouhani said.

Approximately one-fifth of the world's oil traffic passes through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Iran seized an Iraqi oil tanker in the Gulf on Wednesday for allegedly smuggling fuel and detained seven crewmen, Iran's state media reported.

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A German Defense Ministry spokesman said Berlin had no indications of any impending attacks on Western interests by Iran and said that training programs could resume in the coming days.

A Dutch government source also announced a suspension of military training operations, citing an unspecified security threat.

Germany has 160 soldiers involved in training Iraqi forces trying to contain Islamic State militants. The Netherlands has 169 military and civilian personnel in Iraq, including about 50 in Erbil, where they are helping to train Kurdish troops.

Dutch news agency ANP said that Dutch forces have been ordered to remain indoors since Sunday.

Earlier on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department ordered the pullout of some employees from both its embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil.

The order came as tensions build up between the U.S. and Iran. Washington has applied new sanctions pressure on Tehran and sent additional forces to the Middle East, saying that there was an increased Iranian threat to U.S. interests in the region.

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Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen boasted of their successful attack on the pipelines and promised there would be more to follow; no group has claimed responsibility for bombing the ships. Iran was quick to denounce the attacks, saying they should be investigated.

Iran, however, is the primary suspect in both cases and the fingerprints at each crime scene lead back to Tehran. Without massive Iranian support, the rebels in Yemen could not have flown armed unmanned drones hundreds of kilometers to precisely target an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia. They could not have sabotaged four tankers, without leaving behind evidence, without training and guidance from Iranian experts.

The suspicion of Iranian involvement is bolstered by the fact that both attacks, on the pipeline and the tankers, were aimed at Saudi targets directly linked to its ability to produce and deliver oil. In recent weeks, even before Iran and the United States intensified their recent bout of saber-rattling, the Iranians warned that if they were prohibited from exporting oil from the Gulf due to sanctions, "no one will be able to export oil from the region." This message, to Washington and Riyadh, wasn't hard to understand.

Furthermore, the Iranians seem to have made an effort to make sure the damage from the two attacks was minimal. A type of warning signal, or incendiary message to the U.S. and its allies, to say: It's true that we, the Iranians, don't want war but look what we can do if you act against us. This is also why, in both cases and similar to many others in the past, the Iranians opted to perpetrate the attacks via loyal proxies, to prevent a situation in which Tehran could be held directly responsible.

The Iranian public is very concerned about a military clash with the U.S., hence the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hastily declared he doesn't believe a war will erupt. In the same breath, however, he also said he would never agree to renegotiate the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Iran's transition from words to deeds is, in and of itself, an escalation and further enflames tensions in the Gulf. Had the attack on the Saudi tankers or oil fields been more destructive, it could have instantly ignited a conflagration.

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U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Sunday the United States was deploying the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the vicinity of Iran to assist the U.S. Central Command, although it was unclear if that was referring to the Persian Gulf.

"Bolton's statement is a clumsy use of a burnt-out happening for psychological warfare," Tasnim quoted Keyvan Khosravi, spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council, as saying. Khosravi said the carrier had arrived in the Mediterranean Sea weeks ago.

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Monday he had approved dispatching the carrier strike group and bombers due to indications of a "credible threat by Iranian regime forces." He provided no details of the underlying intelligence.

Iran's state-run Press TV earlier said: "The deployment seems to be a 'regularly scheduled' one by the U.S. Navy, and Bolton has just tried to talk it up."

Separately, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the United States was "neither willing nor capable" with respect to an attack on Iran, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported.

Brigadier General Hossein Dehgan said Washington would have a hard time convincing world opinion and regional countries to accept an all-out war against Iran and to mobilize resources for such a conflict.

Iranian newspapers and commentators have widely dismissed Washington's announcement as a "bluff" and "empty rhetoric."

Iran said last month it was prepared for a U.S. decision to end waivers granted to buyers of Iranian oil, as the elite Revolutionary Guards repeated their threat to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if Tehran was barred from using it. Around 30% of the world's seaborne oil exports get shipped through the strait.

While neither Shanahan nor Bolton elaborated on the gist of U.S. intelligence, other U.S. officials told Reuters there were "multiple, credible threats" against U.S. forces on land, including in Iraq, by Iran and proxy forces and at sea.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration said it would end waivers for countries buying Iranian oil in an attempt to reduce Iran's crude exports to zero following Washington's withdrawal from world powers' 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

The administration also blacklisted Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

U.S.-Iranian tensions escalated further after Washington acted on Friday to force Tehran to stop producing low-enriched uranium and expanding its only nuclear power plant. Washington's step intensified a campaign aimed at halting Tehran's ballistic missile programme and curbing its regional power.

Iran will revive part of its halted nuclear programme in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear accord but does not plan to pull out of the agreement itself, state media reported on Monday.

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