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The US and their allies are damaging security in the Persian Gulf by "flooding" the region with arms, and sending a US-led naval force there will make the situation worse, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

US foreign policy undermines the security of the countries around the Persian Gulf, Zarif said on Monday during a trip to Qatar. "The region has become a matchbox ready to ignite because America and its allies are flooding it with weapons."

Iranian officials have been accusing Washington and its key overseas partners like Saudi Arabia of destabilizing the situation in the Middle East by training and arming various anti-government militant groups in Syria.

Zarif argued that the presence of the US-led task force will only exacerbate the situation. The narrow Gulf waterway "will become less safe as foreign [navy] vessels increase their presence in it," he said.

The diplomat stressed that the security in the region must be maintained by littoral countries, not outside powers.

US officers on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, deployed at an American naval base in Bahrain along with some smaller vessels, claimed in an interview with Sky News that their mission is to deter Iran from striking US targets, but added that they were also ready to launch offensive strikes if ordered.

"A large part of deterrence is the readiness that backs that deterrence up. We are ready to defend the US and the US interests if called upon... My job is to be here, to be ready, to deter and to defend if required", Rear Admiral Michael Boyle, commander of Carrier Strike Group 12, said.

Despite the highly publicised deployment, the aircraft carrier has not passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking Mideast crude producers to crucial world markets.

"For our mission here, which is deterrence, we are in the place we need to be. The people in the know in Iran know that we are more of a deterrent here than we are in the Arabian Gulf because from this position we can reach them and they can't reach us. In a boxer's analogy we have got overreach from the spot where we are right now", Boyle added.

Iraq rejects the participation of Israel in the US-led maritime security mission in the Persian Gulf, Foreign Minister Mohamad Alhakim stated, stressing that it might further increase tensions in the region.

"Iraq is against the participation of the Zionist regime's forces in any kind of patrolling to ensure the save passage of ships in the Persian Gulf", Alhakim said on Twitter.

He added that Iraq was "seeking to reduce tensions in the region through negotiations, while the presence of Western forces in the region is increasing them".