Forget Navy Seals!

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted on CBS’ Face the Nation that Iran does in fact have the capability to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world’s oil passes. Mining the strait is easy, cheap (the poor man’s navy) and effective, although satellite, drone-based surveillance and a few “secret mammal” operatives described below could help locate these underwater killers, enabling our Navy and Coast Guard to destroy them… most of them anyway. The problem is that one missed device can wreak havoc on the ship that hits them, and with an oil-loaded tanker, the environmental damage would only make a bad situation a whole lot worse. Iran could also deploy its “fast boats” to stream in, attack a ship making its way through this 62-mile-wide passage. Iranian missiles launched from land or sea are another option. Either way, such actions would be tantamount to an act of war, and what exactly the opposing forces might do is drawing speculation on all sides.

The impact to a closure would be an instantaneous and major spike in the price of oil, some suggest as high as 50% or more. It doesn’t matter that the United States gets very little oil from that part of the world. Oil is a commodity, and scarcity anywhere makes the price go up everywhere. The impact on a global economy struggling to lift itself out of a seemingly never-ending recession would be devastating. But as Europe and the United States accelerate sanctions against Iran over its purported nuclear weapons program, the allies are clearly having a major effect on this rogue nation; Iran may believe, however, that saber-rattling is no longer sufficient and begin mounting a military solution.

But our military does have some secret weapons to reduce the impact of mines: trained dolphins, with cameras and GPS tracking devices, who use their specialized sonar to find and pinpoint these underwater bombs. They’re easily trained and genuinely like pleasing their human handlers.

While we’ve used whales and sea lions in such pursuits, dolphins seem to have special skills that make them particularly effective: “The invasion of Iraq was the last time the minesweeping capability of dolphins was widely-touted. ‘Dolphins - - which possess sonar so keen they can discern a quarter from a dime when blindfolded and spot a 3-inch metal sphere from 370 feet away -- are invaluable minesweepers,’ reported The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2010, the Seattle Times reported that the Navy has 80 bottlenose dolphins in the San Diego Bay alone. They are taught to hunt for mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby. The photo above shows a dolphin with a tracking device attached to its fin. According to a report in 2003, the dolphins only detect the mines. Destroying them is left up to the Navy's human divers. Still, the mammals are large enough to detonate a live mine, a prospect that doesn't delight animal rights groups.” TheAtlanticWire.com, January 13^th.

For animal rights activists, the use of such mammals is troubling. Not only can such larger animals actually set off the mines, “the dolphins would be treated as ‘enemies’ by opposing forces and could also be killed as they search for mines.” Huffington Post, January 21^st. Indiscriminate killing of all dolphins in the area is also possible, simply to eliminate any possible “enemy.” In the end, there are no “good” solutions to Iran’s roguish acts.

General Dempsey recently traveled to Israel, the nation most obviously threatened by Iran’s growing nuclear capacity, in an attempt to assuage Israeli leaders into giving sanctions more time to work. Some Israeli factions seek a tougher resolve. “While the Israeli government has welcomed the moves for tougher non-military measures against Iran, some Israeli officials have questioned American resolve in application of the sanctions… [On January 15^th] Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon told Israel radio, ‘In the U.S. administration there is hesitation for fear of oil prices rising this year, out of election-year considerations’ which he described as a ‘disappointment’ for Israel… Later in the week Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak offered more conciliatory words saying that an Israeli decision whether to strike Iran's nuclear program was ‘very far off.’” CNN.com, January 20^th. In one horrific instant, the world could spiral into yet another major crisis because of the extremists in the profoundly dangerous theocracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and history is often defined by the actions of powerful lunatics.