Green light for Strait of Hormuz shipping could take six months after war’s end

It could take six months or longer for ships to be cleared for transit through the Strait of Hormuz, even after the Iran war is over. That’s because Iran has mined the narrow waterway that guards the entrance to the Persian Gulf. In 1991 it took the United States six months to recover 1,300 mines after the Iraq war — a task that led to the destruction of two American warships, a source with knowledge of military operations at that time, told FreightWaves. “And we had a map of where [the mines] were,” said the source, who requested anonymity to protect relationships.