Iran Deploys Naval Mines to Enforce New ‘Unsafe Zones’ East of Strait of Hormuz

Great powers have jousted over Hormuz since Britain’s 1971 withdrawal left Iran to confront Operation ‘Earnest Will’ (1987-88) when U.S. warships escorted Kuwaiti tankers during the Iran-Iraq “Tanker War.” Just as Tehran then sowed mines to deter rivals, today’s incident revives a doctrine of asymmetric area-denial meant to compensate for conventional naval inferiority. The order for vessels to switch off AIS mirrors tactics Russia used in the Black Sea in 2022 to obscure traffic patterns, hinting at a broader trend of contested choke-points and opaque ‘grey-zone’ control rather than open blue-water battles. Over a 100-year arc, repeated attempts by regional powers—from Nasser’s Suez closure in 1956 to Turkey’s threats in the Bosporus—to weaponise shipping lanes rarely last; coalitions tend to form to keep sea lines open. Whether Iran’s latest gambit becomes another short-lived standoff or cements de-facto Iranian gatekeeping will shape energy security calculations well beyond the Gulf.