The maritime security crisis in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is taking on an increasingly high profile by the day, requiring the urgent identification of a strategy as much for maintaining security to the naval flows transiting the area as for a solution to it.
The first consideration necessary to understand the nature and scope of this crisis is to analyze the motivations that prompted the North Yemeni rebel militias of Ansar Allah, also known as Houthi, to embark on this criminal campaign of indiscriminate attacks.
In spite of the official Houthi narrative of an intervention motivated by a desire to support the Palestinian cause and bring an end to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, there are actually three main reasons behind the decision to launch a threat to merchant and military traffic transiting the region. The first is to increase the negotiating power of the northern rebels in future peace talks that are to determine the conditions for a lasting ceasefire and pacification of the country. The Houthis intend to exert strong international pressure to convince Saudi Arabia in particular to provide substantial economic compensation for the reconstruction of infrastructure in its area of responsibility, and especially that of the port of Hodeydah, Sana’a airport and the city of Taiz, as well as road networks and energy infrastructure. Three main conditions set by the government of the northern region of particular importance in the preparation of the negotiations were the resumption of oil exports, the sharing of its revenues and the payment of salaries to the civil service staff, as well as the full resumption of the functionality of ports and airports placed under their direct control.
The second reason is political-social, to contain the growing discontent of the people of northern Yemen who, after more than seven years of war and massive devastation, are now demanding with the continuation of the ceasefire that the government make efforts to restore infrastructure, restart the economy and facilitate the access of aid and goods essential for the full resumption of social and economic activities. Launching a military campaign against Israel and its allies in the region, in this way, is a diversionary means of demonstrating to society in northern Yemen that the conflict has not ended with the cessation of hostilities with the Aden administration and its allies in the Saudi-led military coalition, continuing instead on a regional scale and requiring the commitment of Yemeni militias to support the Palestinian cause and cease military operations in Gaza. As heartfelt as the Palestinian cause certainly is within Yemeni society, however, the priorities of a population exhausted by a long war are now quite different, and are unlikely to be quelled by the Ansar Allah leadership’s attempt to launch a new regional campaign against the Israeli and Western threat. To quell the discontent, however, the Sana’a government urgently needs economic resources and the ability to revive the economy through its infrastructure, and this can only be achieved through negotiation with the authorities of the internationally recognized Aden government and with Saudi Arabia, seeking to achieve the maximum possible result in this context.
Finally, the third reason is one related to the future political and institutional set-up of Yemen. The Houthis do not intend to relent with respect to the prerogative to exercise control over the northern areas of the country, while it is unclear how and to what extent the authorities in Aden are ready to accept compromise formulas for power sharing with the rebel forces in the north. Among the multiple solutions to the crisis, that of a new partition of Yemen into two separate state entities appears at present as highly likely, at least de facto, opening, however, to further complications on the negotiating front. While Saudi Arabia has always argued in favor of a solution involving the preservation of the country’s unity – mainly as a function of not having to implicitly admit the terms of a military defeat – the United Arab Emirates has openly supported the demands of the separatist bangs in the south, leading to a concrete obstacle in the very definition of the terms within which peace negotiations can begin.
The criminal attack last Oct. 7 by Hamas against Israel, in this way, provided the Houthis with the opportunity to instrumentalize the crisis that emerged with Israel’s military response to suit their own national political agenda, with a view to raising regional tensions, accelerating the evolution of the national negotiation process and obtaining the greatest possible economic benefits.
However, the role of Iran, which has long supported the Houthis and transformed them into its own regional ally, albeit somewhat different from that of the proxy network generically referred to as the “axis of resistance,” must also be included in a framework of already broad complexity. Tehran’s partnership with Sana’a has been consolidated at the height of tense relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia through military and capacitive support that has enabled the Houthis to greatly increase the capabilities of their vast but obsolete military arsenal. Thanks largely to supplies of missiles and drones, as well as to the capacity provided by Iranian technicians to make major upgrades to the vast Soviet-era arsenal available to the Houthis, the Houthis have in fact been able not only to withstand more than seven years of conflict with Saudi Arabia but also, and more importantly, to effectively declare themselves the winners of the war.
With the resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s support for the Houthis has certainly diminished but not ceased, with a view to continuing to exploit their role in keeping regional tensions high. Iran’s problem, however, is that the Houthis are a highly independent and autonomous actor, and therefore cooperative with respect to Tehran’s demands only if they coincide with its own national agenda. Indeed, there has also been no shortage over the past two years of obvious phases of tension in the relationship between the two allies, as a result of actions by the Houthis that have repeatedly embarrassed Iran in resuming its relations with Saudi Arabia.
Iran’s posture today in the Red Sea conflict is thus as ambiguous as it is pragmatic. The presence in the Gulf of Aden area of the Iranian ship Behshad, which is strongly suspected of providing intelligence support to the Houthis especially in the context of targeting naval traffic, is well known. Also fueling the suspicions has been the shifting of the bulk of the Houthi attacks along the same route followed by the Beshad over the past month, transiting the Red Sea in the direction of the Gulf of Aden, where it has in all likelihood also suffered a heavy cyber attack by the United States in recent weeks.
Iran’s interest appears to be to keep regional tensions high through discreet support for the Houthis that cannot, however, result in direct accountability for Tehran. This is a highly dangerous strategy, however, because it is constrained by the decision-making and strategic autonomy of the Houthis, on the one hand, and by the possibility of the emergence of a large-scale escalation capable eventually of shifting the center of gravity of international interest in the direction of Iran itself, with consequences that would be disastrous for the Islamic Republic.
Finally, the two naval missions established to deal with the regional threat, the U.S.-led Prosperity Guardian and the European-led Aspides, fit into this context. The former is characterized by rules of engagement that allow it to defend maritime traffic but also to strike the Houthis on its own territory in order to destroy missile and drone launching infrastructure, while the latter is characterized by the capability only to respond to the threat to maritime traffic. Two approaches that have been the subject of sometimes conflicting interpretations of how the crisis was managed.
The complex dynamics of the crisis in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, however, lead to the current view that the European approach may be more cost-effective, albeit in need of urgent enhancement in the number of ships involved in ensuring security to maritime transit in the region.
Indeed, the posture of the Prosperity Guardian mission, although highly profitable in terms of defending naval traffic, is quite risky in the context of its offensive dimension on Yemeni territory. The Houthis have withstood more than seven years of indiscriminate bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition, effectively keeping their military arsenal intact, and it is therefore unlikely that a few selective actions against their infrastructure would result in a significant loss of capability. At the same time, an increase in conflict on Yemeni soil could lead to a rise in tension beyond the already very high current level, causing the failure of the national negotiation process and thwarting hopes for a solution.
It is not and will not be the ongoing conflict in Gaza that will determine the cessation of attacks by the Houthis, this motivation being purely instrumental in the Yemeni rebels’ intentions, but rather the possibility of accelerating an agreement with the government in Aden and Saudi Arabia.
Against this backdrop, therefore, the solution that appears most suitable for the current crisis comes through a mixture of pragmatism and firmness that favors on the one hand the concrete enhancement of the military effort configured according to the European model-capable of countering the threat while not further exacerbating the crisis-along with concrete political and diplomatic support for the efforts of the United Nations as well as to the government in Aden, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council, to facilitate a quick start to the negotiations and its prompt resolution capable of fairly satisfying the parties’ positions.
Not a compromise with the Houthis, therefore, whose military action must be condemned and firmly opposed, but rather a concrete combination of the political-diplomatic instrument with the military one, with the aim of halting in the shortest possible time a crisis that can lead to traumatic consequences in terms of the global economy and that has already severely reduced mercantile transit through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, with direct consequences for the Mediterranean countries.
On the contrary, the continuity of a crisis that is measured only and exclusively on a military level risks triggering a progressive escalation mechanism that is alien to the will of all parties involved – as paradoxical as even that of the Houthis and Iran may appear – by initiating a spiral of violence capable of compromising in a short time not only the economic prerogatives of the countries in the region, but more on a large scale the global ones, through a profound restructuring of the dynamics of maritime flows.
