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Iran Weaponizing Dolphins for a New Porpoise – HotAir

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May 4, 2026
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Iran Threatens Ceasefire As Blockade Bites – HotAir

The United States Navy’s dolphin doctrine began in 1960, when a study was conducted on a Pacific White-Sided dolphin to see if its shape or features allowed for less drag in the water. And if so, could that be applied to torpedoes to make them faster and longer-range? 

Two years later in Point Magu, California, dolphin radar was studied to see if they could be used to detect mines. A year later, the Marine Mammal Program was underway, training descendants of Flipper to help out our Navy in their own unique way. The program was classified, but was still in limited use even as late as 2003 in the Gulf War. 

Animal rights activists naturally hated the program from the outset. You thought environmentalists were bad, just imagine the vapors the PETA people got at the concept of dolphins being sent into harm’s way as an expendable asset. 

According to open source information, most of the alleged porpoise purposes were defensive in nature – mine detection. Three weeks into the President’s naval blockade of traffic in and out of Iranian ports, the regime is resorting to using Flipper to carry and deploy mines, not to identify and defuse them.





My friend David Strom has a good round-up of where things float in the Strait of Hormuz, but the pythonesque effects of Operation Economic Fury on the remnants of the Iranian regime continue to take their toll. And speaking of tolls, the IRGC can no longer collect much of that anymore from desperate tankers and freighters off its southern coast.

Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies lays out the three simultaenous tracks President Trump should pursue for the next few weeks until the regime ultimately bends the knee or faces the mobs in the streets that are surely coming. 

The first is to sustain the blockade against Iranian ports. Nothing in, nothing out. Thus far, nearly 50 vessels have been denied safe passage. Those that have snuck out face interdiction in open water, which has resulted in the capture of ships half a dozen times, and/or secondary sanctions on nation states that skirt the sanctions on Iran. Second, reorient the entire world oil market, with the United States becoming a dominant energy producer and exporter, and ultimately helping set the price with increasing supply. And third, create a lane of safe passage for the ships stuck on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. 

As for the blockade against Iranian ports, that noose continues to tighten. Grain, which Iran is desperate to import in order to feed their population, is not coming in. Food scarcity is resulting in inflation that is absolutely untenable for any regime desiring to remain in power. 

 Karim Sadjadpour on CNN from Friday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Even two days later on Fox Businss w/Maria Bartiromo, the effects on the regime are even more noticeable. 

But don’t just take our side’s word for it. Here’s the head of Iran’s National Security Council. 





So one faction of the regime says openly they’re doomed if this keeps up, while another faction is ready to send out Flipper carrying a tow rope in his teeth with a bomb right behind to stop ships from traversing the Strait. 

Access to medicine that you and I take for granted is in very short supply inside the regime. 

Iran’s oil industry is on the verge of collapse, but something interesting is happening with gasoline inside the regime. They are very limited in refining capacity, and usually import a large percentage of their gasoline. They are, or were, a net exporter of oil, which is collapsing in real time as they run out of containers to store it before essentially sabotaging their wells or burning off the oil to keep it from spilling into the sea. 

Gasoline, though, is a commodity that has been cheap in comparison to other essentials like food. The reason for that is that the regime has always subsidized gasoline. Cheap gas keeps people from rioting in the streets. 

That’s right, gas in Tehran is the equivalent of 12 cents a gallon. How touchy are Iranians to gas price fluctuation historically? 

Miad Malaki from FDD explains. 

Pointing to Iran’s $0.11/gallon gas price as a sign of regime beneficence is like praising Zimbabwe’s trillion-dollar banknotes as signs of wealth. The price is cheap in dollars because the rial is worthless, wages have collapsed, and roughly a third to half the population lives in poverty. 

The regime raised gasoline prices from ~$0.09/gallon to ~$0.14/gallon in 2019 and faced one of the largest uprisings since the revolution. It then massacred thousands of Iranians and shut down the internet to hide the evidence.

He goes on to explain that to date, Iran’s currency has lost approximately 20,000% of its value, and this is what the rest of the standard of living in Tehran resembles. 

The minimum monthly wage in Iran stands at 166 million rials (~$115), far below what families need: a basic monthly family basket costs at least 580 million rials (~$380). A decade ago, the minimum wage was worth ~$235; today it is worth roughly $94, a 60% real-terms collapse in a decade.

Here’s the problem with an obscenely artificial low price for gasoline, a product they can no longer import and cannot make enough of domestically with their limited refining capacity. They’re going to run out of it very soon. 

Over the weekend, another development in the gasoline story, which in all likelihood will accelerate the scarcity problem coming to the regime and the population of Iran. 





The line of pickup trucks at the Iran-Pakistani border is real enough, but I think this is one of the rare times that Open Source Intel is misreading the why. The trucks are not carrying surplus oil. There are no barrels visible in the beds of the trucks. They’re carrying gasoline. Why? They’re trying to get across the border into Pakistan, where gas sells for around $2.50 a gallon. They’re buying subsidized gas for 12 cents in Iran. They don’t have jobs, food to eat, and there’s no end to the squeeze in sight, and with inflation running amok, everything will be 10-20% worse next month, so they’re pulling a Taco Bell and making a run for the border. It appears the regime is not at all pleased with this development, especially since they don’t really have the cash on hand anymore to subsidize the gas in the first place. Now, these starving would-be capitalists are trying to make a buck on the backs of the regime, and it appears they’re not able to make it across into Pakistan. 

Meanwhile, back home, these posters are appearing everywhere.

Donald Trump said Friday on the White House lawn that he was angry about the Kurds taking the weapons we provided them and not using them against the regime in defense of the protesters in the streets a few months ago. What seems to have changed is that between American and Israeli intelligence, we’ve now figured out who needs to be armed, and when the timing is right, and the protesters take to the streets again, which an inflationary cycle the likes of Iran is experiencing makes inevitable, the odds in that clash will be more equitable to the protesters. 

A tragedy struck an IRGC bomb disposal unit, all 14 of them, when trying to dig out ordnance damaged and/or destroyed during Operation Epic Fury, as part of an operation to discover whether anything usable that could fly west still existed. All 14 bought the express trip to the land that’s got to be out of virgins by now, including this guy. 

All 14, including a senior commander, were close enough to something in question that they were all killed? That seems implausible. And this wasn’t the only mysterious explosion this weekend, either. There was plenty of chatter among Israeli intelligence that certain remnant factions within the regime are targeting and taking out competing factions. When Donald Trump says the regime is falling apart, this is part of what that looks like. 

Do you remember all of the Democrats here who all but cheered for Iran because Donald Trump was the one fighting them? Do you recall Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy’s Awesome! tweet in reaction to reports that a couple of Iranian ships evaded the blockade line? 





You might think that in normal times, anyone rooting for Iran might take a seat and keep quiet for a long time after this. But these are Democrats we’re talking about, the ones that now have an antisemite so in love with the watchtower guard corps shooting down at defenseless Jews in World War II concentration camps that he bore their elite tattoo on his chest for years. If this is the road the regime is destined to travel, perhaps Graham Platner can give them a PR assist, being that he’s got some free time on his hands now that he no longer finds himself in a contested primary for Maine’s Senate race against Susan Collins. 

More examples of everyday life in Tehran. 

Not exactly a career move, is it? And what happens when the gasoline runs out? Bicycles? Skateboards? Scooters? 

The bottom line in assessing whether the blockade should continue or not comes from the regime itself – the hardliners. 

They’re no longer demanding what they were even a week ago, negotiating as though they’d won the war. And they’re offering conditions on their nuclear program, conditions they were unwilling to entertain a week ago. It’s nowhere near what Donald Trump wants or will ultimately get, and he very quickly refused their offer. But the regime hardliners are moving in this direction, and it is because we are successfully denying the regime everything it needs to survive.  

Yo ho. Thanks to seven weeks of absolutely wrecking Iranian air defenses, naval assets, and personnel, his complaints of the United States engaging in piracy and $650 dollars will make him a billionaire in Iran, as little as their rial is worth today. But despite the complaint, the regime cannot do anything about it. Nobody from the rest of the world is coming to help you. Not China, not Russia, not the proxies.  





The second track, while we wait for the IRPC (the Islamic Revolutionary Porpoise Corps) somehow trying not to drown while dragging the world’s heaviest dingleberry behind them, is to take advantage of the instability in the oil market by infusing it with the stability of American oil exporting. 

During the Biden Regency, the concept of the dollar being supplanted by the Chinese yuan, especially when applied to the petro trade, was a very real possibility, and one that Xi Jinping was very much maneuvering to make happen. That is all gone with the events in the Gulf, and especially with Treasury Secretary Bessent’s assassin-like maneuvers of his own. Add to that Chris Wright at Energy and Doug Burgum at Interior, and in under 18 months of the second Trump administration, we keep setting records every week for oil exporting without any sign of a cap on its upside potential anytime soon. 

With that expansion comes revenue to oil-producing states, lots of jobs, and a boost to local economies, and in all likelihood, a healthy jump in the country’s GDP over the next few quarters. 

The last piece of the puzzle is straightening out the Strait once and for all. As of today, Project Freedom is the program to allow stranded tankers and freighters to use the U.S. Navy as the traffic cop when the light goes out at a busy intersection. We will position a route that is free from terrorist dolphin activity, and point the way for oil to move once again. The regime claims this violates the ceasefire. Why they say that, I have no idea. But logic isn’t what one goes to the regime to receive, since they’re deploying aquatic mammals to do their ceasefire-violating for them. 

Just in terms of sticking it to partisan Democrats once and for all, it’s a pretty brilliant move. The War Powers Act is something that virtually everyone on both sides believes to be unconstitutional. But because Donald Trump is the president ignoring it in this particular instance, Democrats are naturally making noise about enforcing it and calling him an authoritarian if he doesn’t ask Congress’ permission to extend the overall mission. He has not ended the ceasefire, so there’s technically no offensive war measures underway. I know this is a thin argument, but the simple truth is there are not the votes in either chamber to mount a challenge to Trump and stop the war, especially if there are no bombs or bullets currently flying. 

The President is calling Project Freedom a humanitarian mission, which is a defensive maneuver, not an offensive one. There is no need under the War Powers Act, even if it were deemed Constitutional, for a defensive-minded mission for humanitarian aid to get Congressional approval. 

But what if the regime remnants act on this channel opened up for free navigation, this renewed act of war or ceasefire violation, as they call it? 





Only a fool would say that? Is this guy a Steely Dan fan? As for foolish, not to mock the coming war effort contributions of Flipperdinajad and his big explosive balls, I could do an entire column on the series of foolish braggadocio-by-tweets offered up by a whole cadre of regime remnants trying to one-up each other in some apparent loyalty test to a Supreme Leader presented as a full-body cardboard cut-out with a picture of his head taped to it. 

The second Iran fires at an American ship or one of the commercial ships they’re shepherding through their lane of operation, it’s no longer a War Power Act initiated by the President. It’s defending the men and women in harm’s way on board American military vessels. And the overwhelming response that will come to permanently disabuse them from doing that again would also not fall under a War Powers Act violation. It would be a new conflict started by Iran in response to a humanitarian mission. 

Yesterday, one ship was fired on 11 miles from the Iranian coast before Project Freedom commenced. The crew is reportedly fine after being struck by an undisclosed projectile. We don’t know if it was a Stinger, a drone, or Flipper breaching out of the Strait, pulling a half-fainer and flinging the mine into the side of the hull. Regardless of that incident, today will really be the test, won’t it? 

Every task Donald Trump has asked our armed forces to complete, they’ve done so with extraordinary precision, skill, and success in this campaign against Iran. There are no reasons, other than being an American Democrat, to believe an express shipping lane can’t also be opened up and secured. All it’s going to take is one ship to stay in that lane, make the turn, and throttle up to open sea. 

In Die Hard 2, after Bruce Willis’ John McClane blows up the planeful of bad guys, allowing the trail of fire from the wreckage to serve as landing lights for a whole string of planes waiting to touch down at Dulles International during a blizzard at Christmas, the scene jumps to the control tower. The director of the airport, played by the Late Fred Dalton Thompson, also a former senator from Tennessee, gets asked by his number two guy, Barnes, if they should radio the other planes and tell them to use the fire as a guide to land safely. “They already know,” Thompson said. 

Two U.S.-flagged ships made it through the Strait, and there were initial reports that a Navy ship was hit by Iranian fire. That was retracted, and despite the tension, the lane seemed to be holding until…

That was followed up by reports of another ship hit, and if that weren’t bad enough, a United Arab Emirates oil facility was struck by Iranian drones. 





Late last week, Brad Cooper, the commander of Centcom, gave President Trump three options for kinetic action if necessary, the third option being the “terminal strike” against Iranian infrastructure. Trump may not want to restart kinetic activity, but now that Iran has upped the ante, it’s time to remind them who is actually holding the cards. 

The squeeze will certainly continue, and it’s almost a certainty that there will be fewer regime remnants on this side of the sand. Retired General Jack Keane on Fox News said it’s time to finish this once and for all. 

He’s right. It’s time to call the Israelis and the Gulf partners and get the band back together again. 


Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

Help us continue to report on the administration’s peace through strength foreign policy and its successes. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.





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