Could it come down to the Dolphins versus the Patriots in the Hormuz Bowl?
That’s what a new report says could happen if conflict resumes between Iran and the United States.
The Wall Street Journal reported that mine-carrying dolphins could be part of Iran’s desperate tactics as it seeks to end the U.S. blockade of its ports.
Iran has gone down this road before, according to the New York Post, which noted that killer dolphins used by the Soviet navy were purchased in 2000.
At the time, the report said, the dolphins were supposedly trained to attack with harpoons on their backs or kill themselves by swimming at enemy ships while carrying mines.
The Wall Street Journal report said the blockade is pushing Iran to the brink, as it considers sending submarines after American ships or cutting undersea phone cables to punish the world.
“Iran was able to create a crisis of market confidence. But disruption is not control,” David Des Roches, a former official responsible for Persian Gulf policy at the Defense Department, said. “With the U.S. blockade, it’s facing a reckoning.”
“The regime has to do something to break this deadlock,” Saeid Golkar, who studies Iran at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, added. “Moderates want a deal because they think more destruction is political suicide.”
“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, remarked. “As a result, Iranian decision makers may soon come to see renewed conflict as less costly than continuing to endure a prolonged blockade.”
The Wall Street Journal estimated that no more than 40 percent of Iran’s exports could shift to land from its ports.
According to Axios, the War Department estimated the blockade imposed by President Donald Trump has cost Iran $4.8 billion.
Some 31 tankers carrying 53 million barrels of Iranian oil are “stuck in the Gulf,” officials said.
As Iran uses every tanker it has to store oil, Gregory Brew, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, said Iran is “probably several weeks, or perhaps as much as a month, away from running out of storage.”
Joel Valdez, acting Pentagon press secretary, said the U.S. blockade is “operating with full force and delivering the decisive impact we intended.”
“We are inflicting a devastating blow to the Iranian regime’s ability to fund terrorism and regional destabilization,” he said. “Our armed forces in the region will continue to maintain this unrelenting pressure.”
During a Friday rally, Trump described U.S. tactics against Iranian shipping, according to The Guardian.
“We… land on top of it and we took over the ship. We took over the cargo, took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” he said.
“We’re like pirates,” he said. “We’re sort of like pirates. But we’re not playing games.”
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