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Showing support for the Palestinian cause. Strike at international trade and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. Forcing Western trade ships to circumnavigate Africa by driving up transport and insurance costs. Dealing a blow to American and European deterrence in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, undermining the stability of shipping lanes. A little over a year after 7 October and the Hamas carnage carried out in Israeli villages and kibbutzim, the Houthi disruption in the Red Sea continues. And the targets remain the same.

Houthi attacks do not stop

According to the non-governmental organisation ACLED, which specialises in collecting data and mapping conflicts around the world, from November last year to September 2024, the pro-Iranian Yemeni group claimed more than 130 attacks on Western merchant and military ships. After the attack on the Greek-operated oil tanker Sounion, insurance risk premiums for ships sailing in the Red Sea increased from 0.7 per cent to 2 per cent of a ship's value. While commercial traffic in the Red Sea - which once accounted for 10% of all world maritime trade - fell by 56% in September compared to the same period last year. The same happened in the Suez Canal, a vital hub for the global economy, through which around 15% of global maritime trade volume passed before 7 October 2023. In July, the Suez Canal Authority stated that revenues fell by almost a quarter in the last financial year from USD 9.4 billion for the 2022-2023 fiscal year to USD 7.2 billion for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

Green light for China and Russia's ships

At the same time, the militants did not cease their direct attacks against Israel: on Monday, 7 October, the anniversary of the massacre, they fired two missiles at Jaffa and Eilat, which were intercepted by the Israeli Air Force. The Houthi (a term used to refer to Yemen's Zaidi Shiite movement Ansar Allah, the ‘partisans of God’) are part of the network of proximity agents linked to Tehran that declared war on the Jewish State following Hamas' terrorist action and the subsequent Israeli response. Lacking their own navy, they conducted the counter actions in the Red Sea through the use of missiles and drones, fired at ships accused of having links with Israel and its allies. Often the attacks have also involved vessels from countries outside the conflict. This disruptive action is so strategically sophisticated that it does not involve US adversaries. At the beginning of the year, the Houthis told China and Russia that they would not target their ships, guaranteeing safe passage. On the contrary, the Middle East Eye portal believes that Russian military intelligence officers were sent to Yemen to assist the Houthis in targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea. A sign of a growing convergence between revisionist powers - Iran, Russia, China - of the US-led international order.

Aspides mission should change

The Houthis on the one hand act to compact the home front and to show the Iranian protector that they represent the vanguard of the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ in the confrontation with Israel. On the other hand, they use the card of defending the Palestinians' reasons as a propaganda veneer for a more strategic objective: threatening the stability of trade routes and undermining American control of the crucial Bab el-Mandeb bottleneck. This is why ‘Prosperity Guardian’, a mission through which the US and UK have conducted several raids against Houthi weapons depots and missile launching sites inside Yemeni territory in recent months, was born. The attacks should serve to restore US deterrence and ensure freedom of navigation. But as we have seen, so far the results have been quite modest. Another problem concerns the European naval mission Aspides, whose tactical command was taken over for the second time by Italy in August. The operation - in which Germany, France and Greece, among others, participate - ‘has tasks of a defensive nature against attacks at sea,’ is written on the Italian Defence Ministry website. Translated: you cannot pre-emptively attack the positions from where the Houthi missiles and drones start, which endangers the security of our navy. A contradiction also stemming from the European Union's non-existent geopolitical subjectivity and the obsolescence of certain parts of the Italian Constitution.

(Foto: AhlulBayt News Agency)

Vittorio Maccarrone
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A journalist and geopolitical analyst, he works for a communications agency and writes for "Il Caffè Geopolitico." He previously had experience with Mediaset, Institute for Cultural Relations Policy (Hungary) and European Public Law Organization (Greece). Master's degree in "World politics and international relations" (University of Pavia) with a master's degree in Journalism (Catholic University of Milan).