US attacks Iran’s mine-laying boats in strait of Hormuz as tensions rise over oil
HMS Montrose, accompanying the Stena Important and the Sea Ploeg vessels in the Gulf. Picture: UK ministry of defence
The US military said it attacked and destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz amid reports that Iran has begun laying explosive devices in the strategically vital waterway.
Citing intelligence sources, on Tuesday reported that Iran has laid a few dozen mines in the strait in recent days and has the capability to sow hundreds more.
About one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said earlier this week it will not allow even “one litre of oil” to leave the region if US-Israeli attacks continue.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “if Iran has put out any mines in the Hormuz Strait, and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY!”
Less than two hours later, the US military released unclassified footage of its attacks on mine-laying vessels.
Oil shipments from the Middle East have been blocked from passing through the narrow waterway since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran 11 days ago, causing oil prices to soar and wreaking havoc on global markets.
The acute sensitivity of the oil markets to news about the strait was underlined on Tuesday afternoon when a swiftly deleted social media post from the US energy secretary caused wild market fluctuations.
Raising hopes that the strait of Hormuz was back open for activity, Chris Wright posted on X: “The U.S. Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets.”
In response, benchmark US crude futures plunged by up to 19%, and an exchange-traded fund linked to oil futures had $84m of its market capitalisation wiped out, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But the post was quickly taken down, and Trump administration officials denied Wright’s claim, clarifying no such expedition had taken place. An energy department spokesperson said Wright’s post had been “incorrectly captioned” by agency staff.
Commenting on Wright’s post, a spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied that an oil ship had been escorted. “Any movement of the US fleet and its allies will be stopped by our missiles and drones,” Ali Mohammad Naini said in comments carried by Iranian state media.
At a defence department briefing, the top US general, Dan Caine, addressed the possibility of the US navy escorting vessels through the strait. “We’re looking at a range of options there, and we’ll figure out how to solve problems as they come to us,” he told reporters.
Alongside Caine, the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said if “Iran does anything to stop the flow of oil within the strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America 20 times harder than they have been hit thus far”.
Iran has repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure with attacks that appear aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the US and Israel to end their strikes.
The strait is just 34km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lane just 3.2km wide in either direction. In the 1980s, Iran mined the chokepoint during its tanker war with Iraq.
On Tuesday, Amin Nasser, the president and chief executive of Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco, said tankers were being rerouted to avoid the strait, and that the company’s east-west pipeline would reach its full capacity this week of 7m barrels a day being brought to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also proposed its largest-ever release of oil reserves to counter soaring crude prices, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials familiar with the matter.
The release would exceed the 182m barrels IEA member countries put on the market in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper said. The proposal was circulated at an emergency meeting of energy officials from the IEA’s 32 member countries on Tuesday, with a decision expected on Wednesday.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
