Pentagon Official: Complete Clearance of Iranian Mines Requires at Least Six Months
Multiple English media outlets cited a report from the U.S. Department of Defense stating that the Pentagon assessed in a confidential briefing to Congress that completely clearing the mines laid by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz could take about six months, and large-scale mine clearance operations would essentially need to begin after the conflict subsides. Several U.S. officials emphasized that the current focus is on ensuring the safety of limited shipping lanes and manageable risks, rather than achieving a complete "zero mines" status in the short term.
Public reports indicate that maritime mine clearance is far more difficult than laying mines. The U.S. military has a limited number of dedicated mine clearance vessels and can only rely on a combination of manned and unmanned systems to detect and remove mines one by one, all while facing threats from missiles and drones, significantly extending the operational timeline. Military research institutions and former naval officers describe this as more of a "continuous weeding battle": even if existing mines are cleared at a certain point in time, they could be quickly re-laid by small fast boats and submarines, making the timeline for "complete clearance" highly uncertain.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The assessment of "at least six months" essentially serves as a strategic time scale: it informs the market and political system that the risks in the Strait of Hormuz are not a short-term disturbance but a structural constraint that could persist over a medium-term cycle. In energy finance terms, this means that the risk premium will shift from "event-driven spikes" to "long-term discount reassessments," with oil prices, freight rates, and insurance costs no longer reacting solely to single attacks but systematically moving up a level.
From a military and technical perspective, mines are a typical "cheap asymmetric weapon," where the cost of clearance far exceeds the cost of laying them. This cost asymmetry means that the party controlling the mines can exert high strategic pressure with relatively low resources. This directly alters the marginal utility of naval power: traditional large ships and carrier groups have their maneuverability compressed in narrow waterways and must rely on slow and vulnerable mine clearance and escort systems, weakening their ability to "rapidly project order."
For the global financial and trade structure, the expectation of long-term mine clearance will transform the Strait of Hormuz from a "default open global public good" into a "potentially restricted bottleneck asset," similar to artificially introducing a high level of uncertainty into the global supply chain. This will drive two long-term adjustments: first, a rebalancing of energy and bulk trade routes, accelerating the diversification of alternative routes, reserves, and production capacities; second, a continued amplification of financial market sensitivity to Middle Eastern geopolitical events, making related shocks more likely to transmit through oil prices and credit spreads to broader assets.
On a deeper level, this is a typical case of "weaponizing channel control." As key straits and canals are increasingly used as policy and military tools, the low transaction costs and low geopolitical friction trade structure formed in the era of globalization is being rewritten in reverse. In this environment, even without a formal blockade, the mere existence of a "six-month complete clearance" technical and temporal constraint gives channel control itself financial value and political bargaining power, becoming a long-term bargaining chip in the sovereign toolbox, rather than just a wartime measure.