The US military said on Saturday that it had started “setting conditions” for mine-clearing operations in the conflict-hit Strait of Hormuz, with two American warships passing through the strategic waterway.
In a post on X, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said destroyers USS Frank Peterson and USS Michael Murphy transited the key strait “as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, said in a statement.
“The Strait of Hormuz is an international sea passage and an essential trade corridor that supports regional and global economic prosperity,” the CENTCOM stated.
It also said that additional military resources, including underwater drones, will be deployed to support the clearance effort “in the coming days.”
This came on the same day when Pakistan-meditated trilateral talks aimed at ending the current war between Iran and the US began in Islamabad.
TRUMP ON HORMUZ CLEARANCE
Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump had posted on social media that US forces had begun “clearing out” the Strait of Hormuz and that all of Iran’s minelaying ships have been sunk.
He framed the purported move as a favour to countries, including several US allies, that he said did not have the “courage or will to do this work themselves.”
Throughout the course of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Trump has repeatedly bashed US allies for not joining in on the US’s military campaign against Iran.
He also reiterated his usual claims of obliterating Iran’s military capabilities, saying, “Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft apparatus is nonexistent, Radar is dead, their Missile and Drone Factories have been largely obliterated along with the Missiles and Drones themselves.”
Despite the repeated assertions by Trump, fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit that accounts for the movement of nearly 20 per cent of global energy supplies.
Throttling the strategic waterway has disrupted energy markets across the world.
(With inputs from agencies)
