Six months to clear Strait of Hormuz mines, according to estimate cited by Washington Post
Key Facts
The Washington Post reported on April 22 that fully clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz could take 6 months, citing an estimate presented by a senior U.S. Defense Department official during a classified briefing for members of the House Armed Services Committee. The report said the operation was unlikely to take place before the U.S. war with Iran ended. Officials familiar with the briefing told the newspaper that lawmakers were informed Iran may have planted 20 or more mines in and around the strait. The Pentagon declined to comment publicly on the estimated duration, but its spokesman, Sean Parnell, described the information in the report as "inaccurate." The report dates to April, not to a new briefing on October 29, and it does not link the mine-clearing estimate to an attack on an LNG tanker.
The report said some mines may have been released remotely using GPS, making them harder for U.S. forces to detect as they were deployed, while other mines were believed to have been laid by Iranian forces using small boats. It said officials discussed the possible use of helicopters, drones and explosive ordnance disposal divers in clearance operations. The military plan that might be adopted was not clear in the report. In a separate briefing reported by the Associated Press in April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military would not speculate on a timeline, without disputing the six-month estimate. He added that he was confident the military could remove the mines it identified in due course. The agency reported that the U.S. Navy had two littoral combat ships in the Middle East capable of sweeping mines, while two Avenger-class minesweepers had left Japan for the region.
Safe passage through the strait is important to energy exports. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said average oil flows through it reached 20.9 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025, equivalent to about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption. In the same period, 89% of crude oil and condensate shipments through the strait went to Asian markets, with China, India, Japan and South Korea among the main destinations. In March 2026, rates for very large crude carriers traveling from the Middle East to Asia reached their highest levels since data collection began in November 2005 at the earliest. The Energy Information Administration linked the increase to Iran's closure of the strait on March 2. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University specializing in Iranian diplomacy, said the six-month estimate "is likely to shake oil and gas markets." He attributed that prospect to the possibility that insurers, shipowners and captains would hesitate to transit a waterway believed to be mined.
In the second quarter of 2026, the front-month Brent futures contract moved between $118 a barrel on April 29 and $72 on June 26, according to the Energy Information Administration. Its estimates showed average oil flows through Hormuz fell from 21.6 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 4.9 million in the second quarter of 2026. The agency then said shipping traffic through the strait increased after the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding on June 18 to end a months-long conflict and reopen the passage. It consequently forecast oil production and global trade flows would return to levels close to those before the conflict by the end of 2026. It also expected most shut-in production to return by the first quarter of 2027. In June, U.S. allies proposed an independent defensive mission to reassure commercial shipping and conduct mine-clearing operations, and the Associated Press said France and Britain had been working on the plans for months.
Mine claims resurfaced on October 29, after Iran said 3 oil tankers had been hit by mines and caught fire in the previous 24 hours as they tried to leave the strait by an unauthorized route. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. military denied Iran's account and that the agency could not verify it. Iran did not identify the tankers in the account cited by the agency. These claims differ from the April report's account of the possibility that mines were present: the earlier report was based on a classified briefing, while the October account concerned incidents Iran said had happened to ships. In June, the Associated Press reported, citing maritime and energy intelligence company Kpler, that about 500 commercial ships remained in the Persian Gulf and could not all transit the narrow strait at once. The agency did not attribute the ships' presence there to the mine-laying discussed in the April report.