As the US continues its blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran has launched plans to neutralize threats by attacking US warships with “mine-carrying dolphins” and submarines, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
An image shared by Iran’s state media Tasnim News Agency showed a map of undersea internet cables crossing through the Strait of Hormuz, which many believe is the threat from the regime to disrupt the region’s telecom supply. These attacks could potentially disrupt global internet connections.
Both the US and Iran have been affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but the effect on the latter is much more pronounced. More than a million people have been put out of work in Tehran since the blockades and soaring food prices, along with a long-standing internet shutdown has deeply impacted businesses.
Iran’s economy is now at risk of crashing but the country’s leaders are still hoping that the US will yield first and lift the blockade. However, it is unlikely that will happen, since President Donald Trump‘s confidence in the US’ power to attack Iran remains constant.
This week, Trump told his aides to prepare for an extended blockade that could remain in place until Iran accedes to his nuclear demands. “The blockade is genius, OK, the blockade has been 100% foolproof,” he told reporters later this week.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently said Tehran would find ways to “neutralize restrictions” on its ports. However, it is unclear how the regime will fight US warships considering up to 90% of the country’s conventional navy was thought to be destroyed by bombings.
About 44 commercial vessels working for Iran have been told to return to port, according to the US Central Command that oversees American military operations in the Middle East. Further, there have been no reports about Iranian oil cargo crossing the US blockade and reaching Chinese customers or other buyers, according to Kpler, a commodities-data company.
“The blockade is increasingly viewed in Tehran not as a substitute for war, but as a different manifestation of it,” Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow specializing in the Middle East at SWP, a Berlin-based research institute, told WSJ. “As a result, Iranian decision makers may soon come to see renewed conflict as less costly than continuing to endure a prolonged blockade.”
Yesterday, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a new threat to the US and said, “Foreigners who commit evil belong in the depths of water,” in a written statement to Tasnim. Khamenei has not been seen in public since the death of his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by US strikes in the beginning of the war.
“Iran was able to create a crisis of market confidence [in Hormuz]. But disruption is not control,” said David Des Roches, a former director responsible for Persian Gulf policy at the Defense Department to WSJ. “With the U.S. blockade, it’s facing a reckoning.”