Karen Kwiatkowski joined and pulled at the loose thread in the CENTCOM victory announcement.
Six months of blockade, and not one vessel has struck a mine.
The Navy's big ships sat some 400 kilometers outside the strait the whole time, which means the sweeping fell to remotely piloted underwater drones, and by several accounts much of what they hauled up was decoys and floating junk that predictably failed to explode.
Then came the detail everyone forgot.
Back in March, one of the big Western papers reported Iran saying it had mined the strait but couldn't remember where.
The conversation's verdict: a country that precise doesn't forget, it plants the story on purpose, and possibly planted far fewer mines than anyone believed, sending Western navies months deep into a hunt for ghosts.
Which leaves the darkest reading of all.
If the minefield was mostly myth, Tehran shut the world's oil artery with a rumor, and the rumor outperformed the arsenal.
@karen4the6th @WeTheBrandon
