Clearing Strait of Hormuz of Mines Could Take 6 Months, Pentagon Tells Congress
By Dan Lamothe, Noah Robertson and Ellen Nakashima
The Pentagon assessment, shared in a classified briefing for lawmakers, suggests gasoline and oil prices could remain elevated through the midterm elections.
It could take six months to fully clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines deployed by the Iranian military, and any such operation is unlikely to be carried out until the U.S. war with Iran ends, the Pentagon has informed Congress — an assessment that means the conflict’s economic impact could extend late into this year or beyond.
A senior Defense Department official shared the estimate during a classified briefing Tuesday for members of the House Armed Services Committee, said three officials familiar with the discussion. The timeline — met with frustration by Democrats and Republicans alike, two of these people said — is the latest sign that gasoline and oil prices could remain elevated long after any peace deal is reached.
Beyond any economic ramifications, such an outcome also could have significant implications politically in the United States — particularly for Republicans — as November’s midterm elections draw near.
President Donald Trump’s decision to start the war has proved unpopular with most Americans, recent polls have shown, and it has fractured his political base, which voted him into office based in part on his repeated promises to New foreign military entanglements and focus more on domestic issues.
On Wednesday, the average cost of a gallon of gas in the United States was $4.02, according to AAA, up from $2.98 just before the war began in February. Trump has vacillated on the question of when gas prices may come down, saying this month that they “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher” by the midterms before declaring that they would be “much lower” before the election. His treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said it could be late September before “we can have $3 gas again.”
Three officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the discussion’s sensitivity, said lawmakers were told that Iran may have emplaced 20 or more mines in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for the movement of Middle Eastern oil through the Persian Gulf. Some were floated remotely using GPS technology, which has made it difficult for U.S. forces to detect the mines as they are deployed, the senior defense official told lawmakers. Others are believed to have been laid by Iranian forces using small boats.
The Pentagon declined to address questions about the military’s assessment for how long it could take to clear the mines. A spokesman, Sean Parnell, issued a brief statement acknowledging that the disclosure was made in a classified briefing for lawmakers and calling the information “inaccurate.”
“By deciding to publish this these false claims, the Washington Post has made clear they care more about advancing an agenda than truth,” the statement says.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, declined to comment. The White House referred questions to the Pentagon.
The stifling of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as an enduring flash point in the war, with Iran declaring it closed and even attacking some ships as a way of inflicting pain on the global economy and the Trump administration as Washington and Tehran each press their demands to end the war. Before the war, about 20 percent of the world’s oil moved through the strait, with Japan, South Korea, China and other Asian nations among those heavily reliant on Middle Eastern energy.
Trump has insisted that Iran end its nuclear program, turn over all of its highly enriched uranium and fully reopen the strait, threatening further military action if Tehran does not agree. Iran has said it will not continue negotiating with U.S. officials unless Trump ends a naval blockade he imposed this month to choke Iran’s oil-based economy.
Iran began laying mines in the strait in March, as U.S. and Israeli forces continued their attacks on the country, a detail reported earlier by CNN. Trump, in turn, threatened that Iran would face consequences “at a level never before seen” unless it removed any mines that “may have been placed.”
The Pentagon in subsequent days highlighted an effort to attack Iranian vessels that could emplace mines. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking on social media, said U.S. forces were destroying those ships with “ruthless precision,” and that the United States “will not allow terrorists to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, responded by denying that Iran was laying any mines. The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported this month that it appears Iran is unable to find all of the mines it laid.
The Pentagon’s latest assessment was shared with lawmakers after Trump said on social media that “Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines” from the Strait of Hormuz.
That assertion, made Friday amid a flurry of messages posted by the president on his Truth Social platform, coincided with his apparent efforts to calm markets and project confidence that a deal to the end the war was near.
Trump on Tuesday said that he was extending a two-week ceasefire indefinitely. Iran’s leadership, he said, is “seriously fractured” and needs to “come up with a unified proposal.” His comments came amid indications that Iranian officials were reluctant to meet for another round of negotiations.
CNN reported in March that an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that Iran could keep the strait closed anywhere from one to six months, with mines relevant as one factor. Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, told the network then that a “six month closure of the Strait of Hormuz is an impossibility and completely unacceptable” to Hegseth.
It is unclear what plan the U.S. military would implement to go about a mine-clearing operation. Officials have raised the possibility of using helicopters, drones and explosive ordnance disposal divers.
Some commercial vessels moved through the Strait of Hormuz this month during the ceasefire, but shipping traffic again stalled this past weekend after Iranian forces opened fire on tanker ships and declared the waterway closed again.
Richard Nephew, an expert on Iranian diplomacy and senior researcher at Columbia University, said the six-month time frame to clear the strait of mines is likely to jolt oil and gas markets given the concern insurers, shipowners and captains will have about moving through a mined sea lane.
“You’re not going to have many people wanting to run that risk,” he said. The presence of mines might not cause a “total interruption,” Nephew said, but the consequences of a two-track strait being partially unusable could be significant.
