Interloper in action

Earlier this week, the US Navy’s top Mideast commander remarked that Iran is directly involved in ship attacks that Yemen’s Houthi rebels have carried out during Israel’s war against Hamas. So far, Iran has not directly involved itself in fighting either Israel or the US since the war in Gaza began on Oct 7. However, Vice Adm Brad Cooper, the head of the Navy’s 5th Fleet, maintained that Iran had been directly fuelling the Houthi attacks on shipping. Since November, the Houthis rebels have launched at least 34 attacks on shipping through waterways leading up to Egypt’s Suez Canal, a vital route for energy and cargo coming from Asia and the Middle East onward to Europe.

The Houthis, a Shiite rebel group that has held Yemen’s capital Sanaa since 2014 and been at war with a Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen’s exiled government since 2015, link their attacks to the Israel-Hamas war. The Houthis have attacked ships they say are either linked to Israel or heading to Israeli ports. Their attacks aim to end the Israeli air-and-ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. But any such links to the ships targeted in the rebel assaults have grown more tenuous as the attacks continue. The Houthis continued to attack ships in the region, at times targeting US Navy and US-owned ships, in addition to the wide range of commercial vessels.

The Red Sea is a critical international trade route for goods and energy and about 400 commercial vessels transit the southern Red Sea at any given time. The assaults have prompted companies to reroute their ships, sending them on longer journeys around Africa through the Cape of Good Hope instead — a much longer and less efficient passage, which bypasses the Red Sea. At least 90% of the container ships that had been going through the Suez Canal are now being rerouted. The delays contributed to a 1.3% decline in world trade in December, reflecting goods stuck on ships rather than being offloaded in port. In response to the growing impact on global trade, the US and a host of other nations have created a new force to protect ships.

To top it, the US and British militaries have been striking targets that Washington has said are involved in the attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria and were threatening US military and commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The Biden administration has also put Houthis back on its list of specially designated global terrorists. The sanctions that come with the formal designation are meant to sever violent extremist groups from their sources of financing, while also allowing vital humanitarian aid to continue flowing to impoverished Yemenis.

More recently, China, the world’s biggest exporter, said it was concerned about tensions in the Red Sea that upended global trade. Beijing has maintained close ties with Iran, largely based on investment and oil imports. Last year, the former hosted talks resulting in the restoration of Tehran’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. However, while aiming to de-escalate” the situation, Beijing has shied away from committing to any side, which has diminished its credibility.

It goes without saying that the chaotic wave of attacks and reprisals involving the US, its allies and foes suggests that the retaliatory strikes haven’t deterred the Houthis from their campaign against Red Sea shipping, and that the broader regional war that the US has spent months trying to avoid is becoming closer to reality.