As President Donald Trump warns Iran against using mines to threaten oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy’s purpose-built minesweepers are sitting stateside thousands of miles away with no plans to put them to use while the war rages on.
As gas prices in the U.S. continued to skyrocket, Trump on Tuesday took to Truth Social to demand that Tehran “immediately” remove any mines placed in the vital seaway and to do so “forthwith” lest the Iranian military suffer “consequences ... at a level never seen before.” That warning came after multiple news outlets reported Iran had begun mining the strait, a narrow waterway that is the only passage from the Persian Gulf into open ocean.
