U.S. Just Did Something BIG To Open Hormuz. Now IRGC’s Sea Mines Trap Is USELESS –

There is something sinister threatening the US Navy.

It is invisible, silent, and cost just a few thousand.

Unmanned underwater mines.

These mines are currently being deployed at the bottom of the world’s narrowest waterway.

A 33 km long straight, the most critical choke point for global trade.

And Iran has decided to fill the straight of Hormuz with explosives, a cheap, primitive, yet terrifyingly effective strategy.

Iran used these mines as a bargaining chip during the war.

It closed the straight, halted traffic, and shook global energy markets.

However, when Iran sat down at the negotiating table on April 10th, those same minds and the safe routes it had announced became its worst nightmare.

And just as the negotiations stalled, the US Navy sent something big to open the straight.

Two US Navy guided missile destroyers, the USS Frank E.

Peterson Jr.

and the USS Michael Murphy transited the Strait of Hormuz.

This was the first transit of US warships through the strait since the war began and it was carried out without coordination with Iran.

Commander Admiral Kooper announced that a safe passage route would be established for commercial vessels.

He also announced that underwater drones would participate in mine clearing operations in the coming days.

Because on April 11th, the New York Times had taken this crisis and uncertainty to an entirely new level.

According to a report citing US officials, Iran could not locate the mines it had laid and did not know the locations of many of them.

The revolutionary guards had mined the strait hastily and haphazardly in the early days of the war using small boats.

The exact locations of many mines were not recorded and some were swept away by currents and lost.

The country that used uncertainty as a weapon has now become a prisoner of the uncertainty it created.

The weapon it laid to harm the enemy suddenly turned into a trap that would blow up Iran itself.

Right now, Iran wants to retain control of the strait and collect fees from passing ships.

The US is insisting on joint control.

Thran is refusing.

Everything on the table, sanctions, nuclear restrictions, reconstruction is secondary until the Hormuz issue is resolved.

But there is a critical distinction here.

These two ships were destroyers, not mine sweeping vessels.

A guided missile destroyer can pass through the straight but cannot clear mines.

This passage was symbolic, not operational.

A message saying, “We’re entering the straight.

We’re taking control.

” The actual mine clearing work is still awaiting completion.

So, how did we get to this point? And just how serious is the mine threat in Hormuz? Can the US and the world clear these mines? First, let’s confront the scale of the threat.

A mind’s power lies not in its explosion, but in the uncertainty it creates.

A mine’s true power is psychological.

The fear of the unknown is greater than the actual threat.

Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 mines in its inventory, confirmed by a congressional report.

Contact mines, magnetic bottom mines, acoustic mines, rocket propelled mines, and adhesive limpit mines.

They can be laid from submarines, small boats, or even fishing vessels.

A 55,000 strong bases naval militia with 33,000 civilian boats can silently lay mines under the cover of night and disappear.

Iran doesn’t just lay mines from ships.

It can launch them from the shore via rocket, hundreds per hour.

The cold math of asymmetric warfare.

A mine costs a few thousand.

Clearing it costs a thousand times more.

Laying them takes hours.

Clearing them takes weeks, sometimes months.

In the 2002 Millennium Challenge War Game, the potential destructive power of this strategy was simulated.

The US conducted exercises against an Iran-like adversary.

The red team employed asymmetric tactics, swarm attacks with small boats, mine laying, and missile fire from the shore.

The result? On the first day, 16 US ships were sunk, including an aircraft carrier.

The Pentagon had to reset the simulation.

However, 24 years later, that scenario was rewritten from scratch.

The US had not lost a single naval asset, and the first phase of the war did not unfold as Iran had predicted.

Here’s the interesting part.

The US didn’t just settle for sinking ships.

It’s trying to eliminate the mine threat at its source.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kaine, stated clearly during a Pentagon briefing, “They’re continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation.

uh and this means going after uh Iran’s mine laying capability and destroying their ability to attack commercial vessels.

>> And Sentcom is doing this systematically.

First, it struck Iran’s mine laying fleet.

Over 30 mine laying vessels were destroyed.

But destroying mine laying vessels isn’t enough because Iran can lay mines even from fishing boats.

The US knows this too.

That’s why in the second phase, it targeted ports and naval bases.

Iran’s small boat fleet, including the besieges civilian vessels, must depart from somewhere, load ammunition, and return.

Those ports, docks, fuel depots, and ammunition bunkers were struck.

The mine storage facilities on K Island were destroyed in an air strike.

Admiral Kooper personally confirmed this operation.

IRGC naval facilities in Bander Abbas, Jas, and Chabaha sustained heavy damage.

Think about what this means.

The besieg’s biggest advantage was the invisibility of their small boats.

Radar struggles to detect them, and if you hit one, dozens more take its place.

But the port from which those boats set out, the station where they refuel, and the depot where they load mines are not invisible.

By striking these ports, the US is curbing the small boat threat at its source.

Thousands of boats still exist, but their places to go, places to return to, and points to resupply are largely gone.

A boat at sea without fuel or ammunition, no matter how invisible it may be, is nothing more than a raft.

Step three, destroy the underground missile tunnels and rocket launch sites along the coastline.

The GBU72 operation, which we analyzed in detail earlier, is directly linked to this.

We noted that Iran does not lay mines solely from ships.

It can also launch them from the coast via rocket, hundreds per hour.

The launch sites for these rockets were hidden in reinforced tunnels along the coastline facing the straight of Hormuz.

The US largely neutralized Iran’s coastal mine launching capability by striking these tunnels with unused GBU72 bombs and GBU57 giants for deeper targets.

The same operation dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s coastal anti-ship cruise missile capabilities.

Tunnel entrances were collapsed and launch galleries rendered inoperable.

US officials described this as dismantling the concept of Iran’s death box.

And the fourth step, maritime intelligence and surveillance.

P8, a Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft, are flying 24/7 around the Strait of Hormuz, tracking Iran’s small boats, submarines, and mine laying attempts in real time.

AI powered surveillance systems platforms similar to Project Maven automatically detect suspicious maritime activity by scanning satellite and sensor data.

Result: Iran’s mine laying capacity has been significantly reduced.

Its ships are gone.

Its ports have been struck, its coastal tunnels have collapsed, its rocket launch sites have been destroyed, and surveillance remains active 24/7.

Besieg’s small boats still exist, but their ports of refuge, ammunition loading points, and fueling stations have largely been eliminated.

The risk hasn’t been eliminated, but it has decreased dramatically.

But, and this is a big butt, the issue of clearing mines already laid remains unresolved.

The US may have largely crippled Iran’s mine laying capabilities, but the mines already lying in weight underwater are still there.

And clearing them, that’s where the real crisis lies.

For 40 years, the US Navy used Avenger class wooden hullled mine sweeping ships for this task.

Wood doesn’t emit magnetic signals, allowing the ships to enter minefields without triggering the mines.

In September 2025, 5 months before the war, the USS Devastator, Dextrous, Gladiator, and Sentry were decommissioned.

They arrived in Philadelphia last week as scrap.

They were replaced by Independence class literal combat ships, LCS, aluminum triaran hull, 40 knots speed, $360 million per unit, interchangeable mission modules.

In theory, a modular platform capable of doing everything.

In practice, hull cracks, gear failures, corrosion issues.

Some were retired after just a few years of service.

They earned the nickname little crappy ships.

And the most critical point, the mine clearing package has never been tested in combat.

Iran’s mines are the first real test for this system.

And the critical difference, the old Avengers with their wooden hulls could operate inside minefields.

Wood doesn’t emit magnetic signals and doesn’t trigger mines.

That’s exactly why they were there for 40 years to enter the field, locate the mine, and neutralize it.

The LCSS, however, have metal hulls.

They can trigger mines.

They must remain outside the threat zone and deploy unmanned underwater vehicles and drones.

And those drones are operating just a few miles off the Iranian coast within range of Iran’s remaining coastal threats.

While clearing mines, they become targets themselves.

One analyst summarized it this way.

It’s like replacing a bomb disposal expert with someone working from a parking lot using a drone.

The USS Tulsa and Santa Barbara, equipped with mine clearing modules, were spotted in Malaysia this week, thousands of miles away.

the only confirmed LCS in the Gulf, the USS Canbor.

A single ship in the world’s most critical waterway.

The US’s other options.

Four Avenger ships in Japan could be deployed on short notice, but the transit would take weeks.

MH60s Seah Hawk helicopters will provide support with laser mine detection and sonar scanning systems.

The US has trained mine hunting dolphins it has been operating for decades.

Their sonar capabilities are more precise than many unmanned systems.

The UK is sending a minecle clearing drone, but it withdrew its last mine sweeping ship from the Gulf in early 2026.

And since it couldn’t return home under its own power, it had to be transported on a cargo ship.

NATO allies have refused to join the coalition.

Mine clearing forces move slowly and operate in predictable patterns, and Iran’s remaining threats are still within range.

This is why allies are reluctant to support the operation.

Additionally, the cleanup is a very costly endeavor.

Another factor is that Europe’s best mine sweeping ships are months away from the straight of Hormuz.

So, hundreds of ships are still stranded in the Gulf of Oman.

Tanker traffic has dropped by 70%.

MK, CACGM, MSC, and Hapag Lloyd have suspended all their shipments.

Qatar declared force majour.

25% of global LNG trade has halted.

The IEA released the largest emergency stockpile in history, 400 million barrels.

The US committed 172 million, Japan 80 million.

But it’s impossible to sustain 20 million barrels per day from reserves for long.

Pakistan has closed schools and switched to a 4-day work week.

India has closed restaurants and hotels to conserve oil for cooking.

Thailand has asked bureaucrats not to use elevators.

Japan imports 70% of its oil from the straight of Hormuz.

99% of Pakistan and Bangladesh’s LNG comes from Qatar and the UAE and Qatar has halted production.

Alternative routes are insufficient.

Saudi and UAE pipelines offer 6 million barrels of bypass capacity, but 14 million barrels remain unmet.

Houthis are active in the Red Sea.

Iranian drones struck Omani ports.

Russia is the quiet winner of the crisis.

Oil prices have risen by 60% and Moscow is pumping directly to China via a pipeline.

Iran’s ally is amassing wealth from Iran’s disaster, an energy crisis unseen since the 1970s oil embargo.

Back then, OPEC cut oil production as a political decision.

Now there is an active war.

Trump pledged a tanker escort operation and lashed out at NATO.

And now all we do is we’ll open up the straight even though we don’t use it because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it that are either afraid or weak or cheap.

I don’t know what it is, but we were not helped by NATO.

That I can tell you.

>> The first step was taken on April 11th with the passage of two destroyers through the straight, but Navy officials still describe the strait as Iran’s death trap.

Retired Rear Admiral Montgomery outlines the scenario.

Two tankers escorted by a destroyer will transit with real-time satellite imagery and fighter jet support.

But he adds, “You can’t stop every missile and drone attack.

” And history serves as a warning.

The 1987 Nest will operation, the US’s last major Gulf convoy operation.

over 30 warships, a 14-month escort mission, and on the very first day, the very first day, an Iranian mine struck the Kuwaiti Super Tanker Bridgton.

7 months later, a mine struck the USS Samuel B.

Roberts frigot.

The ship nearly sank, and 10 sailors were injured.

By 2026, Iran’s mine inventory will be larger, its coastal capabilities more advanced, and the West’s mine clearing assets in the region will be far fewer than in 1987.

Let’s look at the big picture.

The US has taken serious steps to eliminate Iran’s mine threat at its source.

The Navy has been destroyed, ports have been struck, coastal tunnels have been collapsed, rocket launch sites have been eliminated, and 24/7 surveillance is active.

Iran’s new mine laying capacity has been dramatically reduced.

On April 11th, two US destroyers passed through the strait, taking a symbolic first step.

But the mines already in the water are still there, and the specialized ships needed to clear them are either scrapped or in Asia.

There is only one mine sweeping vessel in the Gulf.

NATO refused.

Allies did not join.

The plan will take weeks, perhaps months.

And in the dark waters of the straight of Hormuz, perhaps 10, perhaps 50, mines lie silently waiting.

No one knows exactly how many there are.

And this uncertainty is more destructive than the mines themselves.

Even Iran, which laid them, doesn’t know how many there are or where they are.

The weapon you laid to harm the enemy, has become your greatest obstacle in peace time.

The bitterest irony of modern warfare.

Asymmetric weapons provide an advantage in war but strike their own creator in peace.

And this uncertainty, it’s more destructive than the mine itself.

So, what are your thoughts on this matter? Please share your thoughts in the comments.