September 8th, 2026: Navy SEALs’ Secret Hormuz Mission & Israel-Hezbollah Escalation

Mike Baker (0:13)

It's Tuesday, the 8th of September. Welcome to The President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, of your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, while the US and Iran traded missiles and drones above the Strait of Hormuz, another effort was unfolding beneath the surface of the waterway. We'll reveal the covert mission that Navy SEALs and others carried out for months. Later in the show, the fighting along Israel's northern border is escalating again. A deadly wave of strikes in southern Lebanon is raising new questions about whether the fragile ceasefire, such as it is, can hold. Plus, another look at the chaos and violence that has engulfed Haiti. Now, some of the country's armed self-defense groups are accused of becoming part of the problem. And in today's Back of the Brief, Russia closes Germany's consulate in St. Petersburg as a fallout grows from the suspected Russian drone plot in Leipzig. But first, today's BDB Spotlight. For months, the US and Iran have been fighting a battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz. But according to new reporting from the Financial Times, another US military operation was unfolding largely out of sight beneath the surface of the water. The report says that US special forces spent roughly four months carrying out a covert mission to clear Iranian mines from the Strait, using Navy seals, divers, unmanned vessels and underwater robots to make one of the world's most important shipping routes safer for commercial traffic. It was a dangerous job, as a statement of the obvious, made even more difficult by the fact that the US and Iran were actively trading strikes in and around the same waterway. Iran has acknowledged laying mines in international and Omani waters after the war began, and the International Maritime Organization estimated in June that roughly 80 mines had been deployed along important shipping routes. Now the US publicly announced back in April that it was beginning efforts to establish a safe passage through the Strait, and they said at the time that underwater drones would take part in that operation. But the details of how that mission unfolded, well, remained largely hidden. According to the Financial Times now, small teams of Navy divers operated from inflatable boats frequently working at night. They were supported by unmanned surface vessels and underwater vehicles equipped with advanced sonar that could search for suspicious objects beneath the water. Once a suspected mine was located, unmanned technology, though, could only go so far. Retired Navy Captain Bill Hamlet told the Financial Times that in some cases, a diver still had to enter the water and approach the mine, place an explosive charge on it and destroy it. In other words, active bomb disposal underwater while a war was taking place around them. As of now, no American casualties have been reported in connection with the mine clearing operation.

And there was another unusual element to the mission. The three American ships normally assigned to mine countermeasure operations in the Gulf had reportedly been operating elsewhere since at least early June. That left maritime observers wondering exactly how the US was clearing the strait. By late August of this year, President Trump announced that mines in the strait's international waters had been removed or destroyed. And CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper followed with a more precise assessment, saying internationally recognized transit routes had been cleared of Iranian sea mines.

On the tactical level, that's a significant achievement. But clearing the mines and returning the Strait of Hormuz to normal are proving to be two very different things. According to new shipping data reported by Reuters, traffic through the strait has now fallen to its lowest level since May. Over the past 10 days, an average of just 10 commodity vessels per day have crossed Hormuz. On Saturday, only two passed through. On Sunday, six. And most of those ships used the Iranian route through the strait. A tanker carrying refined fuel from Saudi Arabia attempted to leave through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, but turned back. And according to shipping data, no very large crude carrier had successfully exited the strait since Wednesday.

Now, those are the publicly observed crossings. It is possible that additional vessels are moving through the strait without appearing in the available tracking data. Still, the point being, while the mines may have been cleared from the recognized shipping lanes, the fear and concern from the shipping and insurance industries remains. And mines are no longer the only danger. British maritime authorities have reported 27 incidents involving projectile strikes against vessels operating in or around Hormuz since early July. Over the weekend, the US struck three Iranian oil tankers after Tehran fired ballistic missiles at US naval warships.