President Donald Trump is ramping up America’s military footprint in the region while announcing the next aggressive step: clearing Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz.
In a Truth Social post today, Trump wrote: “We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz… as a favor to Countries all over the World, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others.”
He boasted that all 28 of Iran’s mine-laying boats are already “lying at the bottom of the sea.”
U.S. officials have told The New York Times that Iran is unable to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to full commercial shipping traffic, even though it agreed to do so under the recent ceasefire arrangements.
According to the report, Tehran laid a large number of naval mines in the narrow chokepoint during the conflict but did it in such a chaotic and poorly documented way that it now cannot locate or map many of them. Iranian forces also lack the technical equipment and expertise needed to clear the mines safely, leaving the vital waterway, which carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil, still too dangerous for normal tanker traffic.
This is exactly why the U.S. Navy has stepped in and begun its own mine-clearance operation, with President Trump publicly framing the mission as “doing the world a favor.”
