Jerry Doyle

The Strait of Hormuz is this little dogleg of water between Iran and Oman, basically, a little bit of the UAE.

And it's important because all of the Persian Gulf countries that produce oil, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE,

all use that waterway to get their oil out.

As long as there are no stress factors on the waterway, things such as war or mines, that's just the easiest and cheapest way to do it.

The biggest action in the Strait of Hormuz at the moment is that Iran is able to get its oil out through the strait.

Meanwhile, U.S.

ships and any oil that's been sort of generated in the other Gulf countries is not getting out.

Saudi Arabia has a pipeline running across to the Red Sea that it has been able to pump out something like 7 million barrels per day.

But that doesn't come close to hitting the shortfall that has resulted from the Strait being closed.

The easiest way to put it is Iran has shut down the Strait by virtue of being where it is.

There have been reports that some mines are in the water, some sea mines have been placed in the water.

Those haven't been confirmed.

But it doesn't really matter whether those mines are there or not, whether there are a few mines, whether there are a lot of mines, whether there are no mines.

As long as there's a threat, as long as there's a war going on, they have to act as though there are mines there.

And Iran also has a large stockpile of anti-ship missiles that it can easily target ships in the Strait of Hormuz and even into the Persian Gulf and below, making a transit really difficult just by virtue of the fact that if you go through without permission, if you try to go through without permission, then there's a good chance that you will get hit.

Well, there's several ways that sea mines can work.

They can be placed on the seabed and activated by a ship passing overhead with acoustic sensors or magnetic sensors.

They can float in the water free, not attached to anything, just sort of driven around by the tides or water current that will be activated by brushing up against the ship or even the sound of a ship nearby.

There's other mines that can be moored to the seabed so that you can sort of keep track of where they are.

They float some distance below the surface, where the hull of a ship would be, and they stay in one place.