The Red Sea simply must be opened for global maritime business: the forced route around the Cape of Good Hope is too expensive and too long, a sailor friend, an experienced tanker captain for decades, told me recently.
It is a big question what the “Ansar Allah” rebel movement of the Yemeni Houthis think about the free navigation of the Red Sea, but also numerous international actors keen to see the stop to the ongoing armed threats from the direction of Sana’a, Sa’ada, Amran, Hodeidah….
According to the annual Report of the UN Panel of Experts published in mid-October, the Houthis, who control a third of Yemen’s territory, fired 101 ballistic missiles at Israel from September 2024 to July 2025 (57 were intercepted by the IDF, 38 missed, while four reached Israel). In the same period, the Houthis “Ansar Allah” acted against 25 ships (nine merchant ships), near the Gulf of Aden and the strategic Bab el Mandeb passage (on the photo) on the southern approach to the Red Sea, with a series of human casualties, kidnappings and sinking of vessels. (https://docs.un.org/en/S/2025/650).
As things stand now, the global merchant marine – whose business my friend the Commodore has in mind – does not seem to be returning “full sail” any time soon to the shortest East-West sea route (and vice versa), one between Bab el Mandeb and Suez.
Moreover, the safety of navigation in the Red Sea, “is on the verge of getting worse”, anxiously assesses Dr Konstantinos Kombos, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus (https://maritime-executive.com/article/cyprus-red-sea-security-situation-may-be-about-to-get-worse ).
There are a number of reasons for concern.
“Shippers and insurance companies will now be watching closely to see if the militant group will scale back operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as previous conditional breaks were linked to earlier ceasefires in Gaza. There have been no Houthi attacks on ships so far this month (November), but Israel has continued attacks in Gaza.”
https://speedlogisticsmarine.com/2025/10/31/shipping-tests-the-red-sea-again/.
Earlier this week, Abdel Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Yemeni rebels, announced that another round of conflict with Israel was “inevitable”, promising continued preparations for the “next phase of resistance”.
What should the other side say and then do? Geography could be the key here: on the southern approaches to the turbulent Red Sea, in the Bab el-Mandeb passage and a little to the north of there, there are a handful of small islands where there is space for runways…
The ring could start to tighten from there.
