US CENTCOM denies reports from Iran that commercial vessels are hitting sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz; says all internationally recognised primary transit routes through Hormuz have been cleared of sea mines

US CENTCOM denies reports from Iran that commercial vessels are hitting sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz; says all internationally recognised primary transit routes through Hormuz have been cleared of sea mines.

Claims and counter-claims around shipping security in the Strait of Hormuz are a recurring feature of Gulf tension episodes, and the established pattern is that the market prices the physical disruption risk rather than the headline itself. Roughly a fifth of global oil supply transits the chokepoint, but past mine scares and tanker incidents have tended to lift crude through the insurance and freight channel, via war-risk premia and rerouting costs, well before any actual supply loss, and to fade quickly once transit is confirmed unimpeded. A formal denial from the US military, paired with an assertion that primary lanes are cleared, fits the de-escalation leg of that sequence: official confirmations of safe passage have historically been the trigger for the risk premium to bleed out of the front of the crude curve and out of tanker rates. The case distinction that matters is between an actual mining campaign, which would implicate naval escort and a sustained supply response, and unverified claims, which have typically resolved within sessions. What is worth watching next is whether vessel-tracking data and charterer behaviour corroborate normal transit, and whether either side escalates the information war, since conflicting narratives around Hormuz have preceded both real incidents and false alarms in comparable episodes.