Iran Is Using Tiny ‘Mosquito’ Boats to Shut Down the Strait of Hormuz
Iran Is Using Tiny ‘Mosquito’ Boats to Shut Down the Strait of Hormuz
https://www.wired.com/story/iran-is-using-tiny-mosquito-boats-to-shut-down-the-strait-of-hormuz/
Publish Date: 2026-05-12 15:06:00
Source Domain: www.wired.com
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has developed an asymmetrical naval strategy that is crippling the passage of container ships. This “hemostat” uses guerrilla tactics, after Iran’s “traditional” fleet was almost entirely destroyed by US and Israeli attacks. No longer able to rely on specialized military ships, Tehran is using an unconventional force made up of dozens of small military vessels armed with missiles, machine guns, and drones. Quick and nimble, this “mosquito fleet” is capable of assaulting ships carrying tons of cargo.
In mid-April, US president Donald Trump had reassured the public in a post on Truth Social that Iran’s hemostat fleet did not pose a major problem for the US and Israel. “The Iranian Navy lies at the bottom of the sea, completely annihilated: 158 ships,” Trump wrote. “What we didn’t hit are their small numbers of what they call ‘fast attack boats’ because we didn’t consider them a big threat.” Less than 10 days later, on April 22, an Iranian attack conducted with the small vessels led to the seizure of two large container ships leaving the Strait of Hormuz, changing the course of the war.
Enter the Hemostat Fleet
“Iranian fleets of small boats were created during the Iran-Iraq war, with the purpose of disrupting oil tankers in the Persian Gulf that supported the Iraqi war effort,” says Michael Eisenstadt, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he is director of the Military and Security Studies Program, who compares them to the “US torpedo squadrons that disrupted enemy naval traffic in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea during World War II.”
“The effectiveness of Iran’s fleet of small boats comes from their numbers and their use in swarms, which makes them difficult to counter,” Eisenstadt adds. “Iran has over a thousand of these small boats armed with rockets, machine guns, anti-ship missiles, and mines.” In this way, Tehran can pose a serious naval threat even though…
