The U.S. Navy will be deploying a new generation of drone-based countermeasures to search the sea floor and surface for any mines Iran laid.

Bu Ri lost a leg to a mine in Myanmar decades ago. More recently, six other members of his family have suffered a similar fate or worse, in a sign of the devastation wreaked by civil war.

There may be no country better situated geographically than Iran when it comes to bringing an oil-dependent world to its knees.

Iran’s arsenal of some 5,000 mines could further complicate efforts to restart shipping in the Persian Gulf.