00:21Iran is reportedly considering strapping mines to dolphins and sending them on kamikaze runs
00:26against U.S. warships. Yes, you heard that correctly. And no, this isn't satire. Here's the context.
00:35The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports is now entering its third week. American forces have
00:42intercepted dozens of vessels, tankers are being turned back, and Iran has already lost an estimated
00:48$4.8 billion in oil revenue. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint through which
00:56roughly 20% of the world's oil trade flows, is effectively under American control, and Tehran
01:02is running out of conventional options. So, according to a Wall Street Journal report
01:08citing anonymous Iranian officials, Tehran is now exploring what they're calling previously
01:14unused weapons, ranging from increased submarine activity to severing undersea internet cables
01:20missiles, to mine-carrying dolphins deployed against U.S. warships. Let's sit with that
01:25for a second. The plan, as described, would involve dolphins equipped with mines, essentially
01:32turned into living torpedoes, launched at American naval assets in the Strait of Hormuz.
01:38Iranian state media was quick to call the whole story absurd propaganda. The IRGC-linked outlets
01:45framed it as a Western attempt to make Iran look desperate. And social media? Social media
01:51had a field day. Austin Powers memes? Laser sharks? Frickin' sea bass! The internet basically
01:58wrote itself. But here's the thing. This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Military use of marine mammals
02:05has a surprisingly long and documented history. The U.S. Navy has run a marine mammal program
02:11since the 1960s, training bottlenose dolphins specifically for mind detection using their
02:17biological sonar, which is still more precise than most man-made technology. American dolphins
02:23have operated in the Persian Gulf before. Russia has explored similar programs. So the concept
02:29itself isn't science fiction. It's documented military history. The problem? Weaponizing
02:36dolphins for offensive, kamikaze-style attacks is a completely different challenge. Command
02:42and control in a contested waterway, countermeasures, reliability. Analysts say the practical hurdles
02:49are enormous. And there's zero public evidence Iran has anything like an operational program.
02:55So is this a real contingency? Or is it psychological signaling? Tehran letting Washington know it's
03:02willing to get creative? Either way, it tells you something important about where this standoff
03:07is heading. The blockade is working. Economically. Iran is bleeding revenue. But a cornered regime
03:14with shrinking options doesn't become more predictable. It becomes more unpredictable. Dolphins, submarines,
03:21severed internet cables. Whether any of this gets deployed or not, the message from Tehran is
03:28clear. We are not out of moves. The ceasefire is holding. Barely. Which means, in the strangest
03:36timeline imaginable, the next naval confrontation between two nuclear-armed powers might just involve
03:43competing trained dolphins.
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04:07I see you in the800s team in the next наших tech magazine.
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