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Iran and the US were threatening new attacks in the Strait of Hormuz today, as the Pentagon warned it could take six months to clear mines from the passage.
President Donald Trump ordered the US navy to "shoot and kill" any boat laying mines, and instructed minesweepers to work “at a tripled-up level” to clear the sea lane vital to the world economy. Iran, meanwhile, said a fleet of small, agile boats was waiting to attack US vessels in the strait.
“There is to be no hesitation,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that US minesweepers were “clearing the strait right now.”
Any operation is unlikely to be carried out until the US and Israel's war with Iran reaches a complete end, with a push for new peace talks remaining stalled in Islamabad.
The six-month estimate was shared by a senior Pentagon official on Tuesday during a classified briefing in Congress for members of the House Armed Services Committee, The Washington Post reported.
Little has been confirmed publicly about Iran's alleged minelaying campaign. But three US officials said legislators were told that Iran may have placed 20 or more mines around the strait, the report said.
Some are said to have been floated remotely using GPS technology, which has made it difficult for US forces to detect the mines. Others are believed to have been laid by Iranian forces using small boats. But there is no clear-cut evidence that such mines even exist.
Paul Heslop, an expert with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said Iran had a massive stockpile of sea mines before the war. Compared to landmines, sea mines pose a different challenge for US forces seeking to clear them, he said.
“A landmine generally stays where you put it. So you're working with two dimensions,” Mr Heslop said, but sea mines can move over time.
“So you may clear an area today and if there is a tidal surge, if there is a surface or a subsurface current, if that mine has some sort of propellant mechanism on itself that can move it through the water, all of those things mean that you're in a dynamic environment. Clearing landmines is difficult, clearing sea mines is even harder,” he said.
They could also be difficult to detect, as the temperature of the water can act as a reflector and make detection more difficult.
In a second post on Thursday, Mr Trump said the US had “total control” of the strategic waterway and claimed Iran’s leadership was locked in internal divisions.
“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is,” he wrote, describing the struggle as one between “hardliners” and “moderates.”
“The infighting … is crazy," he said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' “bee fleet” of drones and speedboats is waiting in sea caves around Farvour Island to attack US vessels and “destroy” them by “saturating their defences,” Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the hardline chief of Iran's judiciary, said in a post on X. A “bee fleet” is a reference to a group of small, agile vessels, and the IRGC is known to have used similar boats to board larger ships in recent days.
While Nato countries have frustrated Mr Trump by refusing to send warships to open the strait, some including Britain and Germany are prepared to send mine clearance and reconnaissance vessels to the Strait of Hormuz after the war is over.
“We could provide mine-clearance vessels – we are good at that,” Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. He said a “sound legal basis” would be needed for such an intervention. His announcement followed consultations with fellow European leaders on a potential multinational mission to secure the strait after the war.
The UK was in the process of withdrawing its manned minesweepers from service when the US-Iran war broke out. The British Royal Navy’s last remaining ship, HMS Middleton, left the Gulf last month, leaving a vacuum at a critical time. The navy is now expected to send drone minesweepers that can track and identify undersea threats, with the RFA Lyme Bay “mother ship” expected to be based in Oman. Another proposal has been to charter passenger vessels as the mother ship to drones.
