U.S. forces strike Iranian mine-launch sites near Strait of Hormuz

Analysts cite fundamental imbalance between Iran and U.S. mine warfare

Naval mine warfare in the Strait of Hormuz is defined by what analysts describe as a fundamental imbalance between Iran and the United States. Iran does not need to sink ships to disrupt traffic through the waterway. It needs only to persuade shipowners, captains and insurers that the risk of encountering a mine while transiting the strait is too high to make the trip. The U.S., which wants to ensure safe passage, must instead disable or remove every mine — a task experts say can never be certified complete. “So long as there is a track record of the strait being mined and of Iranians possessing large amounts of mines, it means shipowners will consider it too risky,” said Alessio Patalano, a professor of war and strategy at King’s College London.

That asymmetry framed Sunday’s action, when U.S. forces hit Iranian launch sites that were preparing to fire rockets used to deploy naval mines in the strait, American forces said. Tehran responded by firing a salvo of missiles at Jordan — home to thousands of American troops — all of which were intercepted. The strike was the first U.S. action against Iran in a month.

The strike came days after President Trump said the U.S. had removed or detonated all mines in the waterway and warned that any vessel laying new ones would be destroyed. Trump reimposed a naval blockade in mid-July, barring Iranian oil and other goods from entering and leaving its ports. Iran’s attempt to re-mine the strait indicates its frustration that the U.S. blockade has tilted the balance in the strait, said Eliot Cohen, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Iran has multiple ways to seed the waterway with mines. Its regular navy has largely been destroyed, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still has large numbers of small, fast boats hidden along the coast that could drop mines. Iran has also demonstrated a more unusual method: firing them into the sea from shore. During a naval exercise in 2025, the Revolutionary Guard demonstrated a system using a Fajr-5 rocket to deploy a sea mine at a distance, a method that could allow Iran to seed waters quickly without exposing a mine-laying vessel to U.S. forces. The U.S. has not said whether the launchers struck Sunday were Fajr-5 systems, and details of the Iranian payload remained unclear.

Thomas Shugart, a naval consultant and former U.S. Navy officer, was surprised to hear of sea mines deployed from rocket launchers. The size of the rockets suggests that any mines fired with them would likely be relatively small and simple, unlike the larger ones navies are accustomed to, he said. The U.S. military nevertheless took them seriously enough to warrant destroying them, he said.

The geography of the strait magnifies the weapon’s impact. Commercial ships are concentrated into narrow lanes that constrict their ability to dodge mines and can make them easier to target.

If Iran lays more mines, U.S. forces face the hard task of locating and clearing them. Specialized naval vessels sweep wires through the water to cut the cables or chains that anchor mines to the seabed so they surface and can be destroyed, but that is dangerous in the contested waters of the strait. Alternatively, specially equipped vessels, drones or aircraft mimic the magnetic fields, pressure or noise created by a passing ship to detonate the mines before they can do any harm. U.S. Central Command said last week that American forces had cleared Iranian mines from the internationally recognized shipping lanes using Navy divers, Navy SEALs and American air power.

“The most important point is that mine warfare is a game of unknowns,” said Scott Savitz, senior engineer at Rand and specialist in naval operations and technologies. “It’s never possible to say with complete certainty that all mines have been eliminated, only that the risk has been reduced to acceptable levels.”

If efforts to keep the strait open continue, U.S. and allied forces face a shifting task — from clearing a one-time minefield to maintaining the same stretch of water as continuously navigable. Patalano said Iran’s proximity to the strait and its ability to disperse small boats, mines and other weapons along its coast make it difficult to eliminate the threat entirely. Even after a lane has been cleared, U.S. and allied forces have to prevent Iranian forces from slipping through and laying new mines. “When you say it’s all demined, that’s only until the next time someone manages to slip through whatever measures that you put in place to control it and mine it again,” Patalano said.

Mines have been a feature of naval warfare for centuries. During the American Revolution, George Washington authorized an inventor to send explosive kegs against British shipping on the Delaware River, though the attack failed to hit its targets. In the 1850s, Russia made the first systematic defensive use of naval mines during the Crimean War, which the British countered with an early form of minesweeper. By World War II, U.S. planes laid more than 12,000 mines around Japan, sinking or badly damaging about 670 ships, according to the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command.