This text belongs to ‘Penínsulas’, the newsletter that Enric Juliana sends to the readers of ‘La Vanguardia’ every Tuesday. If you want to receive it in your mailbox, sign up here.
The container ship is becoming the symbol of the dawning 2024. We will see how the year ends. The sea is being reclaimed as a battlefield and 90% of the goods that circulate around the world are transported by sea. A couple of months ago, the Gate of Tears, a poetic translation by Bab el Mandeb, might have seemed like an exotic and suggestive title for an article about the importance of Geography in the tensions of the contemporary world. Today, the Bab el Mandeb Strait is at the center of international attention along with the immeasurable drama of Gaza. In Gaza, tens of thousands of people have been murdered in a massacre that no one can justify or defend. At the gateway that leads from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, a battle that goes beyond the Middle East is beginning to be fought. There is a fight for control of the seas.
Sorry for being obsessive about this topic. The Red Sea has already become a war zone and now we will hear about oil and LNG tankers. Qatar has just announced that its shipments of liquefied natural gas bound for Europe will stop transiting the Suez route and will be diverted to the Cape of Good Hope. That means more time and more money. In turn, the President of the Spanish Government is willing to study sending liaison officers to the United States military mission in the Red Sea, as Pedro Sánchez declared yesterday in an interview on National Radio. The United States’ request for these liaison officers was announced last Sunday by La Vanguardia.
After the military escalation at the end of last week, in which the United States Navy launched more than one hundred Tomahawk missiles against the military infrastructure of the Houthi militias on the western coast of Yemen, navigation through the Red Sea is practically suspended. The Anglo-American alliance has taken action and the Houthis are firing anti-ship ballistic missiles that can split a ship in two if hit squarely. Twenty-six ships were attacked between late November and early January and one of them was hijacked. The Yemeni guerrillas maintained that they only attacked ships owned by Israel or shipping companies that were trading with Israel, and the Persian Gulf countries seemed confident that their ships would not be attacked. This explains why oil and LNG tankers continued to transit the Suez route, while the large container shipping companies ordered their ships to divert in search of the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. Few captains today dare to cross a 35-kilometer-wide strait in which they can be attacked with high-powered missiles.
Does this mean that last week’s Anglo-American offensive has made the situation worse? In the short term, yes. Everything will depend on the ability of the Houthi militias (Yemen’s Shiite faction) to react after the rain of missiles a few days ago, the attitude adopted by their Iranian sponsors and the pressure that China can exert on Iran. Let us not forget that the Suez route is of great importance for Chinese trade with Europe.
We are talking about the great chess board of the Middle East, in which many players intervene. On that board all the pieces are related to each other and the mentality of some players is a mystery. For example, we can ask whether the Houthi militias are totally dependent on Iran or maintain some degree of autonomy. Those familiar with that region of the world point out that the Houthis are not Hezbollah, the disciplined and well-armed Shiite movement that controls southern Lebanon. In the coming weeks we will know. [This past morning, Iran attacked a Mossad (Israeli intelligence service) base in northern Iraq with ballistic missiles.]
To begin with, the Houthis have not surrendered and their propaganda messages ensure that their military capabilities remain intact. It is impossible to think that a hundred Tomahawck missiles have not inflicted any damage on them. Yesterday afternoon, a ship transiting the Gulf of Aden, the bulk carrier Gibraltar Eagle, which sailed under the flag of the Marshall Islands but whose ownership is related to a company from Connecticut, United States, was hit by a guerrilla missile. Yemeni. On Sunday afternoon, the US Navy intercepted an anti-ship missile aimed at the destroyer USS Laboon. This is news that obviously scares away commercial navigation. La Vanguardia’s special envoy in the Middle East, Alexis Rodríguez-Rata, is closely monitoring the situation. I recommend that you follow his excellent chronicles.
The United States and the United Kingdom, architects of last week’s military operation, cannot now turn back. They will continue to harass the Houthis until they are demobilized, or until someone demobilizes them. Meanwhile, traffic through the Suez Canal may be practically paralyzed with the consequent economic damage for Egypt, which will no longer collect many tolls. The alarm about the economic consequences of this situation is already being unleashed. The higher cost of transportation must now be applied to liquefied natural gas and oil if the trend of recent days is confirmed. Problems are beginning to occur in some supply chains and the readjustment of routes, now longer, may cause problems in the rotation of ships.
More consequences. The Italian journalist Ferruccio De Bortoli, former director of Corriere della Sera, a specialist in economic information, warned yesterday that the Suez blockade could harm the ports of southern Europe more than those of the north. For ships that go around the African continent, it is more convenient to continue towards Rotterdam and other northern ports than to enter the Mediterranean. For ships entering the Mediterranean from Africa it may be more convenient to unload in Valencia or Barcelona than in other more distant ports. Once again the importance of the Mediterranean railway corridor appears to us. Currently, Barcelona is the only port on the Iberian Peninsula connected with international gauge to the European railway network. The change of route is especially benefiting the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the port of La Luz, where container ships that need to refuel have begun to arrive. The Canary Islands, support point of the reborn Vasco da Gama route. Italy, on the other hand, may have twofold problems: less trade in its ports and higher costs in shipping gas from Qatar.
We may be entering a long phase of insecurity in maritime routes. This is the reflection that Ramon Aymerich, editor-in-chief of the International section of La Vanguardia, raised this past Sunday in a lucid and intelligent article on the fragmentation of globalization. Jordi Torrent, head of strategy at the port of Barcelona, ??also wrote about this issue a few days ago. A battle has begun for control of the seas that will be fought in different scenarios. The weekly The Economist dedicates its latest cover story to this issue.
A Vietnam in every strait. This is the message sent by the Houthi militias in Bab el Mandeb. This is the message that Iran could send if it decided to inject pressure into the Strait of Hormuz, an unavoidable passage for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, the most sensitive strategic point in the Indian Ocean. Beyond, the very important Strait of Malacca (between Malaysia and the island of Sumatra, Indonesia), through which 30% of global trade circulates, a strait that in the event of a conflict the United States would control. And beyond, the Taiwan Strait, the scene of a terrible war if one day the People’s Republic of China decided to reconquer the former stronghold of the nationalist leader Chian Kai-sheck.
It is still significant that the American bombing of the Houthi military installations occurred two days before the elections on the island of Taiwan. Evidently, the action had been prepared in advance. Some sources report that he anticipated it when he saw that the Houthis were beginning to attack ships with ballistic missiles of Iranian origin, projectiles that were difficult to intercept due to their extraordinary speed over a short distance. The use of ballistic missiles in the Taiwan Strait is one of China’s combat hypotheses. The United States gave the order to attack when it saw that a group of well-armed ragtag men were beginning to use that combat pattern in Bab el Mandeb. Message to Iran. Message to China. The fight for control of the Gate of Tears is today an international significance.
Pedro Sánchez is willing to send Spanish liaison officers to the military mission deployed by the United States in the Red Sea. This was stated yesterday by the President of the Government in an interview with Radio Nacional. “We are now going to study the proposal they are making to us,” said the president when asked about the information published by our newspaper this past Sunday. Given the Spanish refusal to send warships, Washington has requested at least the sending of Spanish officers to the command center of the operation, the United States Central Command that coordinates the deployment of forces in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Sending liaison officers is a way of expressing political support for a military operation. Last Friday, when the massive bombing of Houthi positions in the westernmost region of Yemen was announced, the operation was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Bahrain. The weight of the operation was carried by the United States Navy, with support from RAF fighter jets and the British intelligence network in the Middle East. The other countries mentioned sent liaison officers. This formula means political support, commitment. Other European countries have received the same request.
Significantly, Sánchez is now willing to send officers to the Indian Ocean War Room. It all started on January 18 when Spain’s name appeared in a note from the United States Department of Defense in which the list of countries that supported the Red Sea control operation was announced. Spain appeared on that list along with the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands and Seychelles. Sánchez became angry with the North American statement and flatly denied that participation. France has also disassociated itself from it and Italy has tiptoed away, little by little. President Joe Biden called Sánchez on December 22 to discuss this matter, among other topics. Subsequently, the head of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff contacted the Spanish Chief of Defense Staff. There were also North American representations before the Spanish ambassador in Washington.
The situation in the Red Sea will be addressed tomorrow, Wednesday, in a closed-door meeting at the Davos forum in which the President of the Government is scheduled to attend. At this meeting, with around twenty people, the Belgian Prime Minister and the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Oman will also be present.