The head of the UN maritime agency says no country has a legal right to block shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a trade passage paralysed by the US-Iran war, AFP reports.

The International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) Secretary General Arsenio Dominguez has addressed a news conference as access to the strait remains blocked six weeks after the war erupted with US and Israeli strikes against Iran.

“In accordance to international law, no countries have the right to prohibit the right of innocent passage or the freedom of navigation through international straits that are used for international transit,” Dominguez says.

Iranian authorities have been allowing a trickle of vetted vessels to pass the strait through a route close to their coast and, in some cases, have reportedly levied a payment to let vessels through.

“This principle of introducing a toll on an international strait for international navigation is against the international law of the sea and the customary law,” Dominguez said. “It will create a very dangerous precedent.”

The US vow to blockade Iranian ports, meanwhile, “doesn’t make it any easier”, he added.

“De-escalation is what is going to start helping us to address the crisis and to bring shipping back to the way that we used to operate.”

Dominguez predicts that the extra impact of a US blockade on shipping will be negligible, however.

“With the very few number of ships that have managed to transit, an additional blockade is not going to exacerbate the situation in a level that it could be perceived.”