Tag Archives: land mines

Impossible to Eliminate: Frogmen, Mines and Dinghies in the 2026 Iran War

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U.S. officials said on March 11, 2026 that Iran had laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries 20% of the world’s oil exports from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world… A U.S. military website describes one class of Iranian mine, the Maham 1, as a circular piece of 1980s-era equipment designed to float in water as shallow as one meter that is equipped with five horns that when struck can detonate up to 120 kilograms—equivalent to 264 pounds—of explosives. The mines are moored on a chain or anchored to the seabed.

The U.S. military said it has destroyed Iranian naval vessels designed for setting mines…Yet Iran primarily sets mines using frogmen on small boats that resemble ordinary fishing vessels, an informal maritime militia of dinghies that is virtually impossible to identify and eliminate.  Iran also has an arsenal of limpet mines that divers can attach to the hulls of ships magnetically or with a nail gun.

Excerpt from James T. Areddy et al., Iran’s Sea Mines Are One of Its Most Powerful Weapons, WSJ, Mar. 11, 2026


The Horrors of Bombing: 50 Years After

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 In Cambodia, however, fertile land often signifies danger rather than abundance. When America dropped an estimated 1.8m tonnes of explosives on the country during the Vietnam war, those falling on hard ground generally detonated, whereas many landing on softer earth did not. No one knows how many bombs remain in rich soil. But a paper by four academics at Ohio State University who studied satellite images and reports by landmine-removal groups from a single village, found that perhaps half of the munitions have not exploded.

These wartime remnants have given the United States’ bombing campaign of 1965-73—which ostensibly targeted Viet Cong supply lines, but caused perhaps 150,000 deaths—an enduringly lethal legacy. Since 1979, unexploded ordnance has killed at least 19,000 people in Cambodia (though some may have been blown up by landmines from subsequent wars, rather than by American bombs). Cambodia now has the world’s highest rate of amputees.

A recent study by Erin Lin shows that America’s bombardment injured not just Cambodia’s people but its economy as well. She first interviewed farmers in the country, who said they thought that richer, darker soil presented an unusually high risk of hidden ordnance—especially in heavily bombed areas. They work in constant fear of explosions. Some said that they only planted crops in parts of their farms that they were confident contained no bombs, or that they used hand tools instead of machines to reduce the risk of detonation.

Excerpt from Blood and Soil: American Bombing 50 Years Ago Still Shapes Cambodian Agriculture, Mar. 20, 2021

10 Million Land Mines

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In June 2014, the American ambassador to Mozambique, Douglas M. Griffiths, speaking on behalf of an American observer delegation at the conference of The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction announced that the United States would no longer produce or acquire antipersonnel land mines or replace old ones that expire, which will have the practical effect of reducing the estimated 10 million mines in the American stockpile. Mr. Griffiths also said the United States was “diligently pursuing solutions that would be compliant with the convention and that would ultimately allow us to accede to the convention.”
While he gave no date, the language was still the first explicit commitment that the United States intended to sign the treaty.

“With this announcement, the U.S. has changed its mine ban stance and has laid the foundation for accession to the treaty,” said Stephen Goose, the executive director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch…. “No target date has been set for accession by the U.S., and no final decision has been made on whether to join the treaty,” he said. “The U.S. is reserving the right to use its 10 million antipersonnel mines anywhere in the world until the mines expire.”....Other disarmament advocates were equally pointed in their criticism. Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, expressed concern about the absence of a timetable to destroy the stockpile. Without that, the announcement would have little practical effect “for many, many years to come.”…

The United States is researching ways to replicate the strategic value of antipersonnel land mines without their collateral damage…American defense officials have argued that these weapons have an important purpose — in deterring ground invasions, for example — and that the United States would put itself at a disadvantage by renouncing them. A number of potential American adversaries — notably Russia, China and Iran — have not signed the treaty….

The Pentagon’s main objection to the treaty focuses on American difficulties defending South Korea from North Korea. The Demilitarized Zone between them is filled with land mines — periodically they detonate, as animals step on them — and they are considered a central element of South Korea’s first-line defense against a North Korean invasion.  But to destroy Seoul, the South Korean capital, the North does not need a land invasion: Its artillery could wreak great damage. So advocates of signing the treaty have argued that the mines along the zone are an outdated Cold War relic.

Excerpts, RICK GLADSTONE, U.S. Lays Groundwork to Reduce Land Mines and Join Global Treaty, NY Times, June 27, 2014