Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping

Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping


The Guardian reports:

Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

“The United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military in a way the world has never seen before,” Hegseth told reporters.

He said Iranian ballistic missile production capacity had been “functionally defeated” and that their leaders were cowering underground, because “that’s what rats do”. In fact, some of Iran’s most senior leaders – including the president, Masoud Pezeshkian; the security chief, Ali Larijani; and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi – were today seen on video marching through Tehran for the annual Quds Day rally.

Hegseth also claimed Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei – who was elected by the Assembly of Experts on 8 March following the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – was “wounded and likely disfigured”. The claim has not been independently verified.

Analysts such as the independent Institute for the Study of War have confirmed mass damage to Iranian military infrastructure using commercial satellite imagery, including through strikes on missile complexes and air and navy bases. Nevertheless, attacks by Iran continue. Iranian state media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has continued to launch a barrage of missiles and drones on US military installations in Gulf countries and on Israel. [Continue reading…]


In 2020, Military.com reported:

Iran has some surprising weapons at its disposal. In a 2002 U.S. military exercise that pitted Iran against an invasion from an American task force, the general in command of the opposition was retired Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper. He used motorcycles, small fast-attack boats, land-based missile batteries and even suicide attacks against the Americans.

But he apparently forgot to use Iran’s killer dolphin units.

In 2000, the Islamic Republic acquired a number of dolphins from Russia, ones specially trained to attack enemy ships, according to the BBC. The dolphins had originally been trained by the Soviet Union. When funding for the project ran out, the dolphins were acquired by their former trainer, who moved them to a dolphinarium.

But public interest waned, and their caretaker was forced to sell them when he ran out of food.

“If I were a sadist, then I could have remained in Sevastopol,” Boris Zhurid, their trainer, told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “But I cannot bear to see my animals starve. … We’re out of medicine, which costs thousands of dollars, and have no more fish or food supplements.”

In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the dolphin unit was sent to the Crimean Peninsula from a base in the Russian Pacific area. There, the dolphins were trained to kill enemy frogmen using harpoons mounted on their backs. They would also swim at enemy ships in suicide attacks while carrying explosive sea mines, as they were able to distinguish between Russian and American submarines by the sounds their propulsion systems make underwater.

The highly trained killer dolphins were moved from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf after Iran purchased them — for reasons unknown. According to the Russian newspaper, Zhurid’s work, which supposedly continued in Iran after the 2000 sale, was solely of a military nature.

Depending on the types of dolphins used by Zhurid, the original animals could still be alive, as dolphins have a lifespan of 50 years or more. He could also have trained more killer dolphins for use against Western shipping. [Continue reading…]

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