Images posted to social media Thursday show what experts said are U.S. land mines dispersed across a residential area in southern Iran, in what appears to be the first instance in more than two decades of American forces using the weapons.
Images of the land mines were posted on social media platforms by Dimitri Lascaris, a Canadian independent journalist currently reporting from Iran. Lascaris said he saw four land mines during a tour near Shiraz. The photos show American BLU-91/B anti-tank land mines, which are released from an aircraft as part of the Gator mine scattering system, according to four munitions experts who reviewed the imagery. The United States is the only party in the Iran war known to possess the system.
The land mines were photographed outside the city of Shiraz, around three miles from one of several nearby Iranian ballistic missile sites. Mobile launchers are often positioned near such sites to access missiles, and the land mines could have been intended to make it more difficult to do so, experts said.
“While these land mines are meant to target armored vehicles, they can still be extremely dangerous to civilians,” said Brian Castner, a weapons investigator with Amnesty International.The Iranian State News Agency said at least one person had been killed and others injured as a result of the “explosive packages that resemble cans,” and it warned people to stay away from “any misshapen, deformed, or unusual metal cans.”
The last known U.S. employment of scatterable anti-tank land mines in a conflict was during the Gulf War in 1991, experts said. The last known use of a U.S. antipersonnel mine was a single instance in Afghanistan in 2002, when Special Operations troops utilized them while awaiting extraction in a helicopter, according to Pentagon records.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/03/27/iran-us-land-mines/
Factcheck: It appears to be true that U.S. forces air‑dispersed anti‑tank land mines over a village in southern Iran, but the key details matter: the mines were dropped near a military site, not “across a residential area,” and this assessment comes from independent analysts (Bellingcat, CBS News), not an official U.S. admission.
#BREAKING 🚨🇺🇸 US is dropping landmines around Iranian missile cities.
BLU-91/B anti-tank mines from the Gator Scatterable Mine System were geolocated to Kafari village near Shiraz approximately 2km from the entrance to Shiraz South Missile Base.
The military logic scattering… https://t.co/fgCanlKf22 pic.twitter.com/1zRvtbECke
— Prime (@nucleusprime) March 27, 2026
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING: U.S. reportedly deploying scatterable landmines inside Iran for the first time since 1991
Images near Shiraz appear to show American BLU-91 anti-tank mines dropped from aircraft close to missile sites. Experts say they’re part of the U.S. Gator system.
At least… pic.twitter.com/NNqpvNyalB
— The War Journal (@Thewarjurnal_) March 28, 2026