Ahmadreza Nouri, 27, also said the game he helped design was an Iranian addition to a US online action game, called Counter Strike. An Iranian newspaper had on Saturday reported that Counter Strike was itself an Iranian design.

The Iranian addition allows players to sink a US oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway at the mouth of the Gulf through which two-fifths of the world’s globally traded oil flows.

The game illustrates a warning by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has said oil exports in the Gulf could be endangered if the United States took a wrong move over Iran, which is embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the West.

“We show in this game ... how easily we can spoil their (the US) party by shutting down their oil artery,” Nouri said.

“Some famous computer games have lately insulted our nation and our religious beliefs,” he added. “When they attack us, we retaliate, it is not such a hard job.”

The cyberspace and computer games markets have witnessed sabre-rattling before between Iran and the United States.

A popular US game, called “US attacks Iran” or “Assault on Iran” and made by Kuma Reality games, revolves around a special forces mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Nouri said the US online game Counter Strike allowed others to design different levels. He said the Iranian addition could be viewed at www.kobra.ir.

“This plot has a lot of attraction in it and we should expect to have a high level of interest,” Nouri said.

The launch comes at a critical time in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme, which the United States says is aimed at making bombs but which Iran says is to produce electricity.

An eight-member team, headed by Nouri, created the game in three months for distribution in Iran. Its launch was linked to commemorations of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, whose official start was marked in Teheran this month.