Warships

Italy’s defence minister warns of severe economic fallout if Bab al-Mandeb becomes impassable, bypassing EU delays.

Italy will deploy warships to ensure safe passage for its commercial vessels through the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said, adding that Rome would not wait for a joint decision from the European Union.

“We have the capabilities to protect the passage,” Crosetto said, warning that if the waterway became impassable, the economic consequences would be severe.

The Italian defence minister said that Rome “must not allow bureaucratic delays in decision-making to exacerbate an already complex situation”.

Bab al-Mandeb links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, forming one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors between Europe and Asia and a critical route for oil, gas and container traffic heading to and from the Suez Canal.

Roughly 12 to 15 percent of global trade has historically passed through the narrow waterway, which separates Yemen from Djibouti and Eritrea on the African side and is only about 30km (19 miles) wide at its narrowest point.

The strait’s importance has grown sharply since Iran effectively seized control of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year amid its war with the United States and Israel, choking off the world’s most important oil chokepoint and pushing much of the Gulf’s crude exports towards alternative routes.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, has increasingly relied on pipelines and Red Sea shipping to bypass Hormuz altogether, making the Bab al-Mandeb strait one of the last major arteries still open to Gulf oil reaching global markets.

Control of the strait has been contested for years, as Yemen’s government, Houthi rebels and, at times, forces in the region have held stretches of its coastline at different points since the war in Yemen began in 2015.

The significance of the strait has been hit dramatically in the past few weeks, when the Iran-backed Houthi movement launched a rapid offensive that brought the entirety of Yemen’s western Red Sea coast under its control, including several strategically located islands.

The advance has given the Houthis effectively unrestricted access to the waterway, a development seen as a major setback for international shipping, given the group’s history of attacking vessels it associates with the US or its allies in the region.

The US and the European Union have already carried out military operations aimed at better protecting merchant ships from Houthi attacks in the area, though those efforts have struggled to fully secure the route as fighting in Yemen has escalated.

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said that its forces struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday after Iran launched ballistic missiles towards two of its Navy warships, signaling the latest retaliatory strikes between the parties this week.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary

The US military says it has hit three Iran-linked oil tankers after ballistic missiles were launched towards two of its warships in the region.

US Central Command (Centcom) said on Saturday it had “permanently disabled” a tanker near Kharg Island and another near the Strait of Hormuz, and “completely destroyed” a third in the Gulf of Oman.

Centcom said it “successfully evaded” multiple attacks from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting a US aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer. No American troops were harmed, it said in a statement.

Iranian state media earlier reported that one of its tankers had been struck off the coast of Kharg Island.

Tehran did not immediately acknowledge attacks on US ships.

Admiral Brad Cooper, Centcom’s commander, said in a statement on Saturday: “Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours.”

“We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Centcom, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, claimed that the three Iranian oil tankers were “part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies”.

The strikes come nearly a week after renewed attacks between the US and Iran, which followed a period of relative calm between the warring sides.