Loading ...HONEY I LOST MY MINES
JEFF CHILDERS :
Behold, this morning the New York Times ran a frontpage story headlined, “Iran Unable to Find Mines It Planted in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says.” Honey! Where did I put my mines? The sub-headline explained, “The lost mines have prevented Iran from quickly complying with President Trump’s demand to allow more ships to pass through the waterway.” It’s only going to hurt for a very long time.
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It’s no secret that for weeks I have suggested the Trump Administration might not actually want to re-open the Strait very quickly. Recently, other commenters have begun to suspect the same thing. A closed Strait hurts Asia and Europe, but promotes US oil and natural gas sales, and all right at a critical inflection point in the historic AI arms race, which demands energy above all.
On Wednesday, commenting on the new cease-fire arrangement, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, said that the strait would be open to traffic “with due consideration of technical limitations.” At the time, nobody noticed those two weasel words. But now, ‘technical limitations’ is obviously a euphemism for, we forgot where we left our high explosives. Sorry. Not our fault.
According to the Times, during the conflict, Iran used swarms of small boats to mine the Strait. Apparently, it never wrote down where it left them. Worse, some of them are drifting around the Strait like chocolate nuggets floating in the public pool. “As with land mines,” the Times dryly explained, “removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them.” Well, duh. Further complicating this already troubling scenario, “the U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities.”
Our mine-clearing capabilities are “not robust.” We’d love to get those mines out of there for you, but we just don’t have the right gear. It’s on order. Meanwhile, all we have is this cordless metal detector and a couple reusable Aldi bags.
It’s a double sandbag! Despite everyone’s good intentions, the Strait must remain closed. The Iranians are sandbagging by claiming “technical limitations” qua bad memory. President Trump is also sandbagging. He can say he would happily de-mine the Strait if he could, but what can he do? Minesweeper is no longer supported on the App Store. In other words, it won’t happen overnight. Please be patient while sweeping is in progress. Sorry about that energy crisis.
This morning, after I’d already drafted this segment, President Trump tweeted words confirming the thesis. Behold:
“We’ve now started the process of clearing (mines) out (of) the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to Countries all over the World,” the President said. Clearing them slowly. Now consider his very next sentence: “Very interestingly, however, empty Oil carrying ships from many Nations are all heading to the United States of America to LOAD UP with Oil.” In other words, the US benefits from the mines. It couldn’t be clearer.
But it’s terrible for the fair-weather allies in Europe.
? In an April 8th article, JustSecurity reported,
https://www.justsecurity.org/135899/strait-hormuz-tolls-crisis/
“The head of the International Energy Agency has described the blockade as more consequential than the disruptions of 1973, 1979, and 2022 combined. The disruptions have cascaded well beyond energy markets: fertilizer shipments are blocked, food insecurity concerns are mounting, and aluminum and helium markets have been severely affected.” In Europe and Asia, that is.
Meanwhile, Europe’s leadership and its best policy minds have held a series of emergency meetings to discuss how best to respond to the continent’s crisis, and whether or not to send their own ships to aid the reopening effort (not). But the emergency deliberations swiftly ran aground when delegates fiercely debated over whether lunch should be gluten-free, and which of 24 languages the bratwurst order should be placed in.
In a joint meeting with Vice President JD Vance in Budapest (who was heading to Iranian peace negotiations in Pakistan), Hungarian president Viktor Orban called it potentially the most serious energy crisis in history:
It’s not a very good time to lose track of the mines and also refuse to help find them. Spain is reportedly “wooing” China (which has no spare oil). In Germany this week, gas at the pump was running around $10/gallon, or $250 to fill a 25-gallon tank. So. Carry on, amigos.