Trump Reopened the Strait of Hormuz in a Sentence. Clearing the Mines Will Take Up to 50 Days.

When President Trumpannounced the US-Iran deal on June 14, 2026, he declared the Strait of Hormuz open and told the “ships of the world” to “start your engines.” The physics of the waterway did not get the memo. According to Reuters, clearing the sea mines Iran scattered across the strait could take 40 to 50 days before insurers and shipowners are confident enough to send tankers through.

That gap — a one-day political reopening sitting in front of a weeks-long de-mining slog — is the story now. The U.S. Navy and allied minesweepers are working a channel that may still hold hundreds of mines, while a backlog of oil tankers waits and global crude stockpiles sit near their lowest levels in two decades.

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil. Reopening it on paper is the easy part. This page lays out what the de-mining actually involves, how long it really takes, and why “let the oil flow” is a forecast, not a status.

• 40–50 days — estimated time to clear the strait's mines before normal shipping resumes, per five Western maritime-security sources cited by Reuters · Source: Jerusalem Post; Insurance Journal
• ~20% — of the world's daily oil and LNG supply that passes through the Strait of Hormuz · Source: Gulf News
• 12–15 vs 120–140 — tankers transiting per day during the disruption versus pre-war normal — a near-total collapse in traffic · Source: Jerusalem Post
• Up to 1,000 — naval mines Iran is estimated to hold; at least a dozen confirmed laid, with the true count in the channel unknown · Source: Jerusalem Post (Dryad Global)
• June 19, 2026 — the deal's scheduled signing in Switzerland — the political 'reopening' that the de-mining timeline runs well past · Source: Fox News; CNN

Trump’s order to lift the naval blockade and reopen Hormuz was immediate. The de-mining is not. Reuters, citing five Western maritime-security sources, reported that physically clearing the channel to the point where commercial shipping resumes could take 40 to 50 days — weeks past the deal’s June 19 signing. Insurers, not politicians, set the real reopening date: until underwriters will cover a transit, the supertankers stay put.

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The U.S. Navy is leading, with minesweepers and warships from Britain, France, and Germany, and support from Italy and the Netherlands. The toolkit is a mix of old and new: Avenger-class minesweepers and littoral combat ships based in Bahrain, underwater sonar drones, and MH-60S helicopters using laser detection. The first transit, on April 11, was led by the destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. and USS Michael Murphy. The mines themselves — Iranian Maham-type moored and seabed devices — are sensor-triggered, and the count in the channel is genuinely unknown: at least a dozen are confirmed laid, and Iran is estimated to hold up to a thousand.

The traffic numbers show how badly the war strangled the strait: transit collapsed to roughly 12 to 15 vessels a day, down from 120 to 140 before the fighting. Roughly a dozen vessels remain stuck in the Gulf, including a held supertanker with cargo worth around $300 million, according to Reuters. Tens of millions of barrels are bottled up, and global oil stockpiles are near their lowest since 2003. When the deal was announced, crude prices fell as much as 9% on the prospect of relief — but the relief is weeks away, not days.

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The mines are the last chapter of a months-long squeeze. After the U.S. imposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports in April, CENTCOM said its forces had directed 38 ships to turn around or return to port in the operation’s first two weeks — a figure from late April that later tallies pushed well past 100 redirected vessels. The blockade and the mining together shut a waterway the global economy cannot do without, which is exactly why a deal to reopen it was worth ending a war for. The catch is that you can sign away a blockade overnight; you cannot sign away a minefield.

The deal is real and the reopening is real — on paper. But the Strait of Hormuz will not be “normal” the moment the ink dries in Switzerland. Somewhere between a dozen and a thousand mines sit in the water, a multinational flotilla is working to find them, and the world’s tankers wait on insurers, not on a Truth Social post. “Let the oil flow” is the goal. For the next several weeks, it is also a countdown.

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Last updated June 15, 2026