Iran Considers Arming Dolphins with Mines Against US Warships as Blockade Bites

Iran is weighing the use of dolphins armed with naval mines to attack US warships in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a Wall Street Journal report, as Tehran's hardliners grow increasingly hostile toward the US military blockade strangling the country's oil exports. The report, published on 1 May 2026, draws on accounts from Iranian officials who say a faction within the government views the blockade not as a pressure tactic, but as an outright act of war.

The consideration of mine-carrying dolphins is part of a broader set of escalatory options being discussed in Tehran. Iran is also weighing deploying submarines into the waterway, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has separately threatened to sever key undersea phone cables running through the strait — a move that analysts warn could disrupt global internet communications.

Hardliners Push Back

A growing number of Iranian hardliners believe that the financial crisis sparked by the US blocking Iran's oil exports amounts to an act of war and have called for resuming military action.

Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow specialising in the Middle East at SWP, a Berlin-based research institute, told the Wall Street Journal: 'The blockade is increasingly viewed in Tehran not as a substitute for war, but as a different manifestation of it... Iranian decision makers may soon come to see renewed conflict as less costly than continuing to endure a prolonged blockade.'

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been largely blocked since 28 February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched an air war against Iran. In retaliation, Iran launched missile and drone attacks on Israel, US military bases, and US-allied Gulf states. Since 13 April, the US has blockaded Iranian ports, leading to a 'dual blockade' of the strait.

A Cold War Programme With a Long Trail

The dolphins Iran may deploy are no ordinary animals. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviet military dolphin programme was passed to the Ukrainian Navy. In March 2000, the BBC reported that the Ukrainian navy had transferred its military dolphin project from Sevastopol to Iran, with the remaining 27 animals and special equipment sold to Tehran and the chief trainer carrying on his research at Iran's new oceanarium.

The Soviet programme, which operated out of a facility near Sevastopol in Crimea, had trained dolphins for some of the most extreme military tasks ever assigned to an animal. Handlers trained dolphins to attack enemy divers with harpoons strapped to their backs, or with hypodermic syringes loaded with carbon dioxide. Trainers also taught dolphins to drag enemies to the surface for capture, and to serve as unwitting kamikaze pilots — with bombs affixed to them that would detonate on contact with a ship's hull.

What became of those animals after arriving in Iran has never been fully confirmed. Nobody outside Iran knows what happened to the Soviet-trained dolphins since then.

The US Has Done It Too

Iran would not be the first nation to field dolphins in the Persian Gulf. US Navy dolphins were transported to the Persian Gulf in 1987 to detect Iranian mines and to guard against enemy frogmen attempting to attack the US Navy's floating command post during the Iran-Iraq War's 'Tanker War' period.

More recently, the US military has begun deploying sea drones to scan for and clear mines in the Strait of Hormuz, in an effort to break Iran's grip on the strategic shipping lane and reopen it to commercial traffic.

Retired US Admiral Tim Keating had previously claimed that military dolphins could be used to detect mines in the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran threatened to close the waterway back in January 2012, a warning that now carries renewed weight.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints. Around 20% of global petroleum and 20% of liquefied natural gas traverses the strait each year, with pre-conflict vessel traffic standing at around 3,000 ships per month. Any escalation in the waterway — whether through mines, submarines, severed cables, or animals weaponised by a Cold War-era programme — carries consequences far beyond the immediate conflict.