US President Donald Trump has demanded compensation from Iran for those he claimed have been killed by the Islamic Republic’s forces.

He told reporters on Monday that he was demanding payment from Tehran for “50 years” of damages caused by Iran.

The warmonger president made his remarks in response to Iranian demands for compensation for the damage caused by the illegal and unprovoked war launched by the US and Israel on February 28.

Tehran vowed not to open the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flowed before the war began, unless Washington agrees to pay reparations and lift sanctions. 

The Iranian demands were largely in line with the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran in June, which was subsequently broken by the Trump administration.

Talks between Iran and Oman over the waterway, which separates the two countries, are ongoing, but President Trump told reporters: “They asked for reparations, you might say. Or they asked for money for the damage that we’ve done. I said that’s a good idea.

“Well, we’re going to ask for money for the damage they’ve done over a 50-year period.”

The payments would cover deaths among US forces in the region as well as civilian protesters in Iran, he said, claiming that 52,000 people have been killed in the country in the past four months. 

Tehran says some 3,117 people died in anti-government protests that swept the country in January, before the US and Israel began the war.

In February, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported about 7,000 deaths, including 6,500 protesters.

Mr Trump later took to social media to say that “Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza!” All have experienced conflicts in which Iran-allied groups took part, though most casualties have been attributable to their opponents in the various wars, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State terror group.

Iran said earlier that it was nearing a final pact with Oman to define new shipping lanes between them through the Strait of Hormuz, but it repeated its demand that the US must stick to any deal reached, including by ending all military threats.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told state media on Monday that talks with Oman were “progressing smoothly and constructively,” with an agreement reached on a shipping route map, though some technical issues remained unresolved.

But Mr Baghaei said continuing “hostile actions” by the US in the Strait of Hormuz had made the waterway unsafe and that Tehran considered Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports an “act of aggression.”