Yemeni Shiite Houthi rebels have declared a blockade of Saudi Arabia, which has the potential to lead to an even greater escalation of the war in Iran and further disrupt international trade and oil supplies, the Associated Press notes, writes BTA.
Fighters from the group, whose full name is “Ansar Allah“ (“Supporters of Allah“), announced that they were closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to ships bound for Saudi Arabia in response to the blockade imposed by the Yemeni kingdom and the recent Saudi bombing of the international airport in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The rebels said they forced six ships to change course on Tuesday, but there was no official confirmation; four more were reported yesterday.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a strategic shipping route connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. About 12% of world trade passes through the strait, including a quarter of global container traffic sailing between Europe and Asia via the Suez Canal in Egypt.
IS THE BAB EL MANDEB IMPORTANT TO SAUDI ARABIA
The strait has become even more important to Saudi Arabia since the war in Iran disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and effectively paralyzed seaborne oil and gas trade in the Persian Gulf region, the AP points out.
The Houthis have announced that they will only stop ships bound for Saudi Arabia or leaving its Red Sea ports. During the Gaza war, Yemeni rebels declared a similar blockade against Israel, attacking a large number of ships that had little or no connection to the conflict in the Palestinian enclave.
But even the threat alone is enough to make shipping companies avoid the strait, the AP notes.
HOW THE NEW CONFLICT IN YEMEN BEGAN
Yemen has been in a state of civil war since 2014, when the Houthis rebelled and took over much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. In 2015, an Arab coalition led by Sunni superpower Saudi Arabia launched a military intervention to defend Yemen's internationally recognized government, but it achieved little.
The Houthis are still not defeated, and Yemen, the poorest Arab country, is facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The new tensions have raised fears that the civil war will resume after fighting had recently subsided.
The situation escalated further earlier this month when the Houthis said Saudi Arabia tried to prevent a plane carrying Houthi leaders from returning from Iran, where rebel leaders were attending the funeral of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Houthis said Riyadh had struck Sanaa airport. The plane landed safely at another airport.
In response, Yemeni rebels fired a salvo of missiles at Saudi Abha airport, setting off the most serious escalation of tensions between them and Riyadh in years, the AP notes.
DANGER OF BIGGER FIRE; US AND PAKISTAN WARN HOUTHI
“All threats by the Houthis against international shipping will be met promptly and decisively because they constitute a flagrant violation of international law“, said Major General Turki al-Maliki, a Saudi military spokesman.
In the US, President Donald Trump downplayed the threat but also issued a warning.
“There is no such thing (blockade – ed.)”, he told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “But if something like that happens, we will probably have to take care of it.“
During the Gaza war, the Houthis attacked over 100 vessels, and it was the US military intervention against them early last year that ended the rebels' attacks, which were subjected to prolonged bombing.
According to Ahmed Naghi, a Yemen expert at the Eurasia Group think tank, the blockade announced by the Houthis is beneficial to their Shiite ally Iran.
“From Iran's perspective, the emergence of new hotbeds of tension in the region is welcome because it gives it additional leverage,“ Naghi said. “Through the Houthis, Tehran has influence over another of the world's most important maritime shipping routes.“
Against this backdrop, Pakistan warned that it could take military action against the Houthis to protect Saudi Arabia, DPA reported.
"Pakistan reiterates that any hostile action against Pakistani-flagged vessels or against Pakistani maritime interests will be considered a major threat to Pakistan's national security and sovereign interests," the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.
Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, has a military alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Islamabad condemns the Houthi threats against the kingdom.
Under the alliance between Islamabad and Riyadh, an attack on Saudi Arabia could also be seen as an attack on Pakistani interests.
STRAITS HAVE BEEN A SOURCE OF TENSION FOR CENTURIES
The Straits of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and several other sea straits have been a major factor in world trade for centuries, notes Agence France-Presse.
To reach their destinations si, gas and oil tankers and bulk and container ships, due to the geography of the globe, must necessarily pass through these straits, which brings to the fore the issue of control over them.
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed on December 10, 1982 in Montego Bay, Jamaica, is a kind of constitution of the oceans. "It dictates that straits are a natural feature, where you cannot collect fees and where freedom of navigation is guaranteed," Sylvain Domergue, a lecturer at the Sciences Po, told AFP. in Bordeaux and author of the book Géopolitique des espaces maritimes („Geopolitics of Maritime Spaces“).
In contrast, in the Panama or Suez Canal, which are man-made, fees can be imposed by the country controlling them.
With regard to Hormuz, „Iran, which has not signed the Montego Bay Convention, has so far respected it by virtue of customary law“, pointed out Domergue.
The problem is not new, since the Portuguese navigators, who were the first to discover the way to the Indies, tried as early as 1507 to monopolize control of the Strait of Hormuz in order to get their hands on the trade in spices and other riches of the Orient, the expert noted.
But after the famous polemic in which at the beginning of the 17th century The Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius prevailed with his thesis on “Mare Liberum“ (Freedom of the Seas), the straits came to be seen as a fundamental part of international long-distance trade, “because the sea belongs to no one“.
“To guarantee freedom of navigation, the freedom of the straits must first be guaranteed“, noted Domergue.
The Dutch adopted this doctrine and defended the freedom of the seas, followed by Britain and later by the United States, which “to this day almost completely observe the Montego Bay Convention“, although they did not ratify it.
In Europe, the Danish straits (Öresund and Kattegat), which close the Baltic Sea, “were of great importance in the 19th century because they allowed the Danes to collect tolls for a very long time“ and are strategic because they “block access to the Atlantic for the Baltic powers, especially Russia“, the geographer said.
The only major straits where a toll is still collected are the “Turkish Straits“ the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which are regulated by earlier agreements concluded in Montreux in 1936.
“In the long term, other issues related to the straits will arise“, said Domergue, pointing in particular to the Taiwan Strait, given China's stated territorial ambitions in Southeast Asia, and the Malacca Strait, shared by Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.