WASHINGTON/TEHRAN: The United States called to defuse tensions Tuesday in the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran’s military warned they would face “force” if one of the U.S. navy’s biggest aircraft carriers returned to the Gulf.

The United States is not looking for a “confrontation” with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and wants to see an easing of tensions, the Pentagon said.

“No one in this government seeks confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz. It’s important to lower the temperature,” Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters Tuesday.

Tensions have soared as Iran faces a fresh round of punitive sanctions from Western governments over its nuclear program, prompting threats by Tehran to choke off oil shipping in the strategic Strait of Hormuz or to go after American naval ships.

Iran’s army chief Tuesday warned an American aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf, saying the U.S. carrier would face the “full force” of the Iranian navy if it returns, a navy spokesman, Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi, told Iran’s Arabic television service Al-Alam.

The aircraft carrier referred to was the USS John C. Stennis, one of the U.S. navy’s biggest warships, and its escort destroyers have been deployed in the Gulf for the past few months.

Last Thursday, it moved east through the Strait of Hormuz and out of the Gulf, through a zone being used for the Iranian naval maneuvers. An Iranian military aircraft filmed the U.S. vessel, with its bow number – CV-74 – visible.

“We advise and insist that this warship not return to its former base in the Persian Gulf,” Brig. Gen. Ataollah Salehi, Iran’s armed forces chief was quoted as saying on the armed forces’ official website.

The U.S. Defense Department brushed off the warning, saying its “deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region will continue as it has for decades.”

The developments sent oil prices sharply higher, gaining more than 3 percent in New York trade to $102 a barrel.

The unprecedented warning by Iran came a day after it completed 10 days of naval war games by testing three anti-ship missiles. The display of force was meant to show it controlled the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows.

The USS John C. Stennis started its current seven-month deployment at sea in late July 2011, according to U.S. navy websites. The U.S. Defense Department did not say whether the carrier was meant to travel back into the Gulf before its scheduled return to the United States. But it said in a statement that it regularly sent one or more of its 11 aircraft carriers and their accompanying ships on rotation to the Gulf to support military operations in the region.

“Our transits of the Strait of Hormuz continue to be in compliance with international law, which guarantees our vessels the right of transit passage,” it said.

Iran has threatened to close the strait if it comes under attack or if new sanctions hit its oil exports. At the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama activated such a sanction, signing into law measures targeting Iran’s central bank, which processes most of the Islamic Republic’s oil sales.

The European Union, which is mulling an embargo on Iranian oil, is expected to announce further sanctions of its own at the end of January.

The United States said the latest threats from Iran showed sanctions were putting Tehran in an increasingly difficult position. “We see these threats from Tehran as just increasing evidence that the international pressure is beginning to bite,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The Western sanctions, which add to four sets of U.N. sanctions, punish Iran for maintaining nuclear activities that the United States and its allies believe are being used to develop a weapons capability.

The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report in November strongly suggesting Iran was researching nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but Tehran denies the allegations.

Iran has been responding to the pressure by both threatening a military response and trying to keep the door open to resuming negotiations over its nuclear program that were suspended nearly a year ago.