AP reported yesterday that Trump says the U.S. Navy is clearing Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz.
Sweeping for underwater explosives could take months despite a tenuous ceasefire between the United States and Iran in the weekslong war, experts say. Any future claims that the U.S. cleared the waterway where 20% of the world’s oil typically passes might fail to convince commercial freighters and their insurers that it is finally safe.
“You don’t even have to have lain mines—you just have to make people believe that you’ve laid mines,” said Emma Salisbury, a scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister has denied that Iran laid the mines, while the IRGC has warned of a “danger zone” of some 1,400 square kilometers where mines may be present. This is exactly the ambiguity Salisbury describes.
“And even if the U.S. sweeps the strait and says everything’s clear, all the Iranians have to do is say, ‘Well, actually, you haven’t found them all yet,’” said Salisbury, who is also a fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. “There’s only so much the U.S. can do to give that confidence back to commercial shipping.”
US Central Command, in an X posting last night, announced that the M/V Sevan, one, “among 19 ‘shadow fleet’ vessels sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury for activities related to transporting billions of dollars worth of Iranian energy, oil and gas products, including propane and butane, to foreign markets,” was intercepted by a US Navy helicopter and followed instructions to return to an Iranian port under escort. “U.S. forces continue to enforce U.S. sanctions and fully implement the blockade against ships entering or departing Iranian ports. 37 vessels have been redirected since the start of the blockade,” it said.