The Red Sea could be 2024's front line
A sharp increase in attacks on international shipping by Houthi rebels in Yemen has highlighted the global economic importance of the Red Sea remaining safe
The civil war in Yemen has been raging for more than nine years now, and the truth is that all but dedicated analysts and committed activists have largely ignored it. The fact that Saudi Arabia has been involved militarily since 2015, and that the Houthi movement which seeks to control Yemen is allegedly backed by Iran and North Korea, has kept the conflict in our peripheral vision. There have been awkward questions about the UK’s close military relationship with Saudi Arabia, given accusations of war crimes and of exacerbating a humanitarian crisis. But, as I wrote a few days ago, sometimes foreign policy has to accommodate unpalatable relationships, and we have been able largely to look away.
This changed after 7 October. After Israel began its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis, an extremist Shia movement with slogans including “Death to America”, “Death to Israel” and “A curse upon the Jews”, declared they would attack any ships heading towards Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians. The group’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, gave a speech in which he said they would “constantly monitor and search for any Israeli ship in the Red Sea”.
This matters because Yemen contains the eastern side of the Bab-el-Mandeb, the strait which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and thence to the Indian Ocean. The strait, the name of which means the Gate of Tears, is only 16 miles across at its most narrow, and is a potentially catastrophic chokepoint for shipping using the Suez Canal.
We know how important the Suez Canal is. We can think back to 1956, when Britain and France fought a disastrous war against Egypt to stop President Nasser seizing control of the waterway, but we needn’t go back anything like that far. Just recall March 2021, when a container ship called the Ever Given ran aground and found itself wedged across the canal, blocking it completely. Very quickly ships began queueing, unable to pass, and within five days there were 369 vessels backed up.
This revealed the canal’s importance. By providing a shortcut for shipping which would otherwise have to circumnavigate Africa and go round the Cape of Good Hope, it reduces journeys by 8,900 kilometers. More than 10 per cent of world trade by volume goes through the canal: in 2020, that was a record of 18,880 ships carrying more than a billion tons of cargo. The closure exposed shortcomings in supply chain resilience, and particularly showed the vulnerability of just-in-time manufacturing: it may be economically beneficial to have goods arrive exactly when they are required rather than storing them, but if there is a major disruption in that delivery system, it can bring the whole process grinding to a halt. Lloyd’s List, the authoritative London-based shipping newsletter, estimated that each hour by which goods were delayed cost $400 million, while every day of closure disrupted trade worth $9 billion.
The Houthis know this perfectly well. As a result, they have begun flexing their geopolitical muscles. On 19 November, a car-carrying ship, Galaxy Leader, which was owned by an Israeli company called Ray Shipping, was hijacked and taken to Hodeida, a Yemeni port, then to a location further up the coast of Yemen. The ship has been opened as a visitor attraction, but the whereabouts of the 25 crew are still unknown. Two more ships were attacked on 24 and 26 November, the latter, the chemical tanker Central Park, issuing a distress call which was picked up by the guided missile destroyer USS Mason. Two missiles were fired from Yemen at the USS Mason as she responded, but neither struck their target.
The Houthis then began using missiles and drones to attack ships. Although they claim an Israeli connection by their targets, this has not always been true. It seems more likely that this is part of a general attempt to disrupt the global economy, and they have warned ships to avoid the area altogether, which is manifestly not practical. It has certainly prompted global concern; commercial shipping to Eilat in Israel has fallen by 85 per cent, insurance costs for vessels going through the Red Sea have risen sharply (and some Israeli ships have been unable to secure insurance at all) and hundreds of ships have been rerouted around Africa. Many major shipping companies, including MSC, Maersk, COSCO and Evergreen, suspended traffic through the Red Sea, as did BP.
United States Navy and Royal Navy vessels have already taken action to shoot down drones and missiles but stopped short of action against Houthis in Yemen itself. There is a substantial Western naval presence in the region: Naval Support Activity Bahrain, a US base which dates back to the Second World War, is home to the naval component of United States Central Command and the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet under Vice-Admiral Charles Cooper II. The Department of Defense has also recently deployed two carrier strike groups, those based around the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Middle East. There is also a British base, UK Naval Support Facility, in Bahrain, opened in 2018 as a base for Operation Kipion: this is the Royal Navy’s long-standing mission in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, maintaining stability and protecting trade.
The Americans reacted with determination earlier this month. On 18 December, Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, announced the establishment of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational security project to create security in the Red Sea and provide protection for international shipping. The operation comes under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces headquartered in Bahrain, and its lead component will be Task Force 153, which is already focused on maritime security in the Red Sea, Bab-el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden. Egypt is a key partner in CTF 153, and indeed held the task force command for the first six months of this year under Rear Admiral Mahmoud Abdelsattar. He was succeeded in June by Captain Anthony Webber of the US Navy (who, as it happens, holds an MSc from the Joint Forces Staff College of the National Defense University in “Interagency Coordination and Effectiveness”, which will surely serve him well).
When Operation Prosperity Guardian was announced, it included nine allied nations: the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain. Within a few days, that had risen to more than 20. The Pentagon emphasised that the Houthis were “attacking the economic wellbeing and prosperity of nations around the world,” dubbing them “bandits along the international highway that is the Red Sea”.
However, it was noted that Egypt, such a key partner in CTF 153, and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis’ antagonist in the Yemeni conflict, were absent from the roster. This highlights the interconnection of political concerns: the attacks may threaten international shipping, but they began in response to Israeli military action against Hamas in Gaza, which has caused an enormous number of civilian casualties. In addition, the United States’s staunch support for Israel has been extremely unpopular in the Arab world. There have been a number of other qualifications: France announced that their ships would remain under French command, Italy said that the frigate it has deployed is not part of Prosperity Guardian and will only respond to requests from Italian ship-owners and Spain has said it will not participate in a US-led force but only under the auspices of NATO or the European Union. The government of Seychelles clarified that its participation was limited to information exchange, while Denmark’s contribution will be one naval officer.
This is obviously a challenge for the task force. Unity of command is a vital part of efficient military operations, and restrictions can cause serious problems. When NATO led the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, individual contributing members imposed “national caveats” on what their personnel could and could not do. One study calculated there were between 50 and 80 separate restrictions on NATO forces which “increase[d] the risk to every service member deployed in Afghanistan and bring increased risk to mission success”, and were “a detriment to effective command and control, unity of effort and… command”, in the judgement of US General John Craddock, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).
The announcement was enough to convince Maersk to announce on 24 December a resumption of shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which was an early vote of confidence. And there are precedents for successful deployments of this kind. In December 2008, the European Union launched Operation Atalanta (formally European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) Somalia), a counter-piracy operation off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean. It initially focused on shipping which was part of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), as well as monitoring fishing off the coast of Somalia, though it has since been extended. Last year, the mandate was expanded again to December 2024, with additional “non-executive tasks” like monitoring narcotics trafficking and promoting “overall regional maritime security architecture”.
Atalanta has been a success. It has a 100 per cent record of protecting WFP shipping, and the number of attacks by pirates has declined sharply: in 2009, there were 199 attacks, 203 the following year and a high of 212 in 2011, but this was reduced to one in 2019 and none in 2020. There have been no successful attacks by pirates since 2012. So there is good evidence that the presence of EU naval forces has at least suppressed piracy off the Horn of Africa, even if it has not eradicated it.
However, it should be noted that the formation and deployment of Atalanta relied on the authorisation of no fewer than four United Nations Security Council Resolutions, 1814, 1816, 1838 and 1846. The chain of command is somewhat elaborate: political control and strategic direction comes from the EU Political and Security Committee, with advice from the Military Committee and support and monitoring from the EU Military Staff, which then passes to the Operation Commander at headquarters in Naval Station Rota (currently Vice Admiral Ignacio Villanueva). Command and control in the operational area is then exercised by the Force Commander, currently Commodore Rogério Martins de Brito of the Portuguese Navy. It is, however, clear and comprehensive, with a clear flow from overall political authority to operational military execution. Atalanta also has a very clear mandate and objectives.
Operation Prosperity Guardian does not at the moment have this clarity of purpose or command. It is, of course, very early days: it is just more than a week since the Department of Defense announced the initiative. But some potential problems have already been highlighted by the responses of France, Italy and Spain. The political sensitivities extend from the American leadership of the operation to the adversary, the Houthi movement in Yemen, with the added risk of the enterprise being seen as the protection of “Western” economic interests.
Like any conflict in the Middle East, the current tension around Bab-el-Mandeb must partly be seen in the context of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Joost Hiltermann and April Longley Alley of the International Crisis Group have argued that Iran is a patron of the Houthi movement in the way it is of, say, Hezbollah, but there has certainly been some transfer of weaponry and, probably, training. While the Houthis may be focused on an essentially domestic agenda, its rhetoric is consistent with that of Tehran in anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment, and the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khameini, has expressed his support for the Houthi movement.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, directly opposed the Houthis in the Yemeni conflict and is a close ally of the United States and the United Kingdom. It is very easy for the US to blur the distinctions between the Houthis and Iran, and with Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq: this was demonstrated on Christmas Day when Iran-affiliated militants attacked Erbil Air Base in Iraq, injuring three US military personnel, and the US conducted retaliatory air strikes. The additional factor of the Gaza conflict, Israel’s increasing international isolation and the support for Israel from the US and the UK has made this dynamic much more complicated.
It is also worth looking briefly at the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. This 21-mile passage connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and between 35 and 40 per cent of the world’s crude oil shipments use the strait to get from the oilfields to the open sea. There have been territorial disputes over the Strait of Hormuz for more than 60 years, and the fact that Iran is on one side means that it can easily attempt to disrupt shipping through such a vital choke point, one around which there is no alternative route. Iran has issued both veiled and explicit threats to close the strait in the event of conflict with the US or Israel, and these have led to counter-threats by the US to maintain the shipping lanes by force if necessary.
There is a dispute currently going on over three islands in the strait, Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb. These were occupied by the UK until 1971, technically attached to the Emirate of Sharjah; on 29 November 1971, two days before the British presence was scheduled to be withdrawn, the emir of Sharjah signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shah of Iran’s government for the joint administration of Abu Musa. That same day, Iranian forces occupied Greater and Lesser Tunb, and seized Abu Musa the following day. On 2 December, Sharjah joined five other territories to form the United Arab Emirates. A week later, the UAE took referred the dispute over the islands to the UN Security Council, which “deferred consideration of this matter to a later date”.
Earlier in the year, the government in Tehran began encouraging Iranians to move to the disputed islands in an attempt to bolster the population and make their occupation a more emphatic fait accompli. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had already carried out drills on the islands and deployed missile defence mystsems and anti-aircraft weapons in a show of military strength.
On 23 December, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, coordinating commander of the IRGC, warned that the United States and its allies would find the Mediterranean Sea closed if they continued to commit “crimes” in Gaza. “They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, (the Strait of) Gibraltar and other waterways,” he said, adding “Yesterday, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz became a nightmare for them, and today they are trapped… in the Red Sea.” He did not say how this would be achieved, as Iran of course has no military forces anywhere near the western end of the Mediterranean, though he did refer to “the birth of new powers of resistance and the closure of other waterways”. In any event, the inclusion of the Strait of Hormuz in his remarks indicates a level of disruptive thinking in Tehran which must cause concern.
The same day, the Pentagon announced that the MV Chem Pluto, a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker carrying crude oil, was struck by a one-way attack drone fired from Iran. This has been denied by the Iranian foreign ministry. The ship was en route from Saudi Arabia to India when it was hit, 200 miles from its destination. Although a fire broke out on board, no-one was injured. The ship’s operator, Ace Quantum Chemical Tankers, was formed from a number of companies including Quantum Pacific, owned by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer, and it has been suggested that his link to the company may have led to ship being targeted. In response to the attack, the Indian Coast Guard sent patrol vessel ICGS Vikram to assist the tanker and has deployed three guided-missile destroyers to the Persian Gulf “to maintain a deterrent presence”.
It is easy to see how these disparate events can come together and create a much wider geopolitical and economic crisis. Disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea simultaneously has the potential to cause massive economic loss and interrupt international trade across a huge number of sectors, as well as bringing together military forces from the United States and Iran, and other countries like the UK and India, in tense and combustible proximity.
Seen from this more expansive perspective, it is clear that Operation Prosperity Guardian is a small part of any solution. It is at the moment not much more than a sticking plaster, but it is a start. The hijacking of the Galaxy Leader on 19 November was only the beginning of a process which is unlikely to be resolved soon. The security of maritime trade will be a major item on everyone’s agenda for 2024, in a way that few global leaders would have foreseen only three months ago. As the saying goes, life comes at you fast.