"If Iran mined the Strait of Hormuz, how come we haven't seen any ships sunk or damaged by mines?"
Good question. The answer seems to be less that ships veered away from mines and more that Tehran was largely bluffing with the mine threat, but the details — once again — veer straight into absurdity.
Before we talk about questionable deployments and the bit about the trash bags (really!), a few words on mine warfare. Actually, I can start with just two words: It sucks.
Mines are easy to deploy, and difficult and dangerous to get rid of. They're the ultimate waterway nuisance weapon, because just the threat of them can slow down or even halt shipping, and tie up valuable resources.
And we never, ever have enough minesweepers. Back during the Cold War, we let our NATO allies deal with much of the Soviet mining threat, while our Navy focused more on ship and submarine threats to the sea lanes to Europe across the Atlantic. But then we won the Cold War, and our NATO allies let their minesweeping capabilities atrophy. If you're wondering whether we stepped up our minesweeping game in response…
…yeah, no.
But I digress, if only slightly.
And Another Thing: During World War II against Japan in the Pacific, we launched a naval and mine warfare campaign to cut off Japan's maritime trade in an effort to starve the Empire into submission. It was called Operation Starvation, and it was frighteningly effective. It's the kind of thing our military can do when our idiot politicians remember to let them off the leash.
Tehran well knows that we don't have enough minesweepers — and so does the rest of the world. The guys who own and captain multibillion-dollar tankers are perhaps painfully aware, which is one yuge reason why shipping through Hormuz slowed to a trickle after Tehran announced it was mining the strait back in March.
“They’re firing on commercial ships, and they’ve mined large segments of Hormuz — international waters,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 2.
“What they’re doing is unlawful and illegal,” Rubio said.
I'm a Rubio guy, but I don't put much stock in statements like that last one. What's "lawful and legal" is usually determined by the winner after the fact.
What's maybe the more pertinent question is what, exactly, did Tehran actually do to the Strait of Hormuz?
Iran Watcher reported Friday that the "Hormuz minefield was largely a bluff built on decoys, while even the real mines were reportedly poorly deployed."
"According to reporting cited by CNBC's Brian Sullivan, shipowners said many suspected mines were decoys, including inflated trash bags," the IW post continued. "Separate reporting citing U.S. officials said more than 200 mine-like objects were cleared from the main shipping lane, but only around 11 were actual mines."
What was I just saying about how tricky — or is that tricksy? — mine warfare is?
"A small number of real mines mixed with decoys frightened shipowners, drove up war-risk insurance, and helped choke commercial traffic."
But that's changing.
Traffic through Hormuz reportedly was up something like 400% over just two weeks — and that data is a week old. I wonder how much of that is due to the heroic efforts of our armed forces, and how much is due to shippers realizing that the mine threat turned out to be all bark and no boom.
It also makes you wonder about Tehran's recent boast of having doubled or even tripled drone production.
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