Iran is considering using dolphins armed with mines to blow open the Strait of Hormuz, which has been under a financially crippling US military blockade for weeks, according to a report.
While the tense extended cease-fire with the US holds, a growing number of Iranian hardliners believe that the financial crisis sparked by the US blocking Iran’s oil exports amounts to an act of war and have called for resuming military action.
That military action could include unleashing previously unused weapons to attack US warships deployed in the region — including mine-carrying dolphins, according to Iranian officials, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Tehran could also send submarines into the waterway, according to the WSJ, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard has already threatened to cut key phone cables running through the strait, which could wreak havoc on global internet communications to escalate tensions further.
“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.”
