TEHERAN - Iran's supreme leader denounced on Wednesday US "nuclear threats" against the Islamic Republic, and its elite military force said it would stage war games in a waterway crucial for global oil supplies.

The Revolutionary Guards' exercises in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz this week take place at a time of rising tension between Iran and the West, which fears Teheran's nuclear program is aimed at developing bombs. Iran denies the charge. Iran has also reacted angrily to what is sees as US President Barack Obama's threat to attack it with nuclear arms.

Obama made clear this month that Iran and North Korea were excluded from new limits on the use of US atomic weapons - something Teheran interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary.