{"id":45461,"date":"2026-03-31T19:31:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/45461\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T19:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:31:06","slug":"houthi-threat-to-red-sea-shipping-could-reemerge-as-iran-conflict-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/45461\/","title":{"rendered":"Houthi Threat to Red Sea Shipping Could Reemerge as Iran Conflict Deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran is reportedly pushing the Houthis to resume their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in the event the U.S. further escalates its war on the Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

A Bloomberg report cited European officials familiar with the matter, saying that the Yemen-based militant group is weighing options for more aggressive action after entering the conflict.<\/p>\n

More from Sourcing Journal<\/p>\n

The Iran-funded and -aligned Houthis, who are a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, launched ballistic missile strikes against Israel Saturday, opening another front in the Middle Eastern skirmish.<\/p>\n

A Houthi reentry into Red Sea shipping would compound the issues already posed by Iran\u2019s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has forced ocean carriers to avoid the Persian Gulf and driven a global spike in oil prices.<\/p>\n

The Houthis effectively closed off container shipping in the Suez Canal for nearly two years by intermittently attacking ships in the Red Sea and its chokepoint, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, with missiles and drones. The group\u2019s attacks began in November 2023 in response to Israel\u2019s war against Hamas in Gaza, and persisted until after both parties came to a ceasefire<\/a> last fall.<\/p>\n

During the period, major ocean carriers largely avoided the region<\/a>, instead opting to divert their vessels around southern Africa\u2019s Cape of Good Hope. That resulted in longer transit times of roughly two weeks, creating a delayed shipping cadence for cargo that most heavily impacted retailers in Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even with an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in place, the container shipping industry was largely reticent about returning to the Red Sea on a regular basis. CMA CGM, which had select services traversing the waterway<\/a> throughout the crisis with the help of the French Navy, and Maersk had planned on restoring more service loops through the Suez Canal. But both carriers reversed those decisions in the weeks prior to the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

After the U.S. and Israel launched their military offensive against Iran at the end of February, the container shipping companies that had braved out Red Sea sailings earlier in the year are pulling back.<\/p>\n

In the two-week period ended March 22, 43 container ships transited through Suez Canal, down 33 percent from 64 transits in the two-week period ended March 8, according to Drewry\u2019s Red Sea Diversion Tracker.<\/p>\n

Of the ships that passed through, 19 were owned by China and Hong Kong-based shipowners, with Drewry speculating that these firms were able or willing to risk sailing in this risky region.<\/p>\n

In that two-week period, CMA CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) were the only carriers which sent ships through the Suez Canal that could carry more than 8,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs).<\/p>\n

Conversely, the number of vessels sailing around the Cape of Good Hope rose 4 percent to 326 in the two-week period ended March 22, up from 314 in the previous period.<\/p>\n

The report followed the E.U.\u2019s unveiling Monday that it had extended the mission of two naval operations in the Red Sea to February 2027.<\/p>\n

Operation Aspides, the military operation tasked with responding to the Houthi threats in the Red Sea, had already been extended the extra year via a council decision in February. Operation Atalanta, the maritime operation launched to combat piracy in the waterway, was also extended.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder an updated mandate, vessels and aircraft deployed in two of the bloc\u2019s maritime missions will be authorized to collect information on suspicious activities linked to critical undersea infrastructure,\u201d the E.U. member states said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The naval preparation in the Red Sea comes as roughly 2,000 ships and 20,000 crew members remain stuck in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

According to data from ship tracking platform MarineTraffic, four vessels passed through the waterway Monday. The ships comprised one sanctioned vessel, one shadow vessel, and two non-sanctioned, non-shadow vessels.<\/p>\n

Two vessels were attacked in the Persian Gulf Tuesday, which would mark 20 successful hits on ships in the region since the start of the war, per MarineTraffic.<\/p>\n

A fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker, the Al-Salmi, was struck off the coast of Dubai, likely by an armed Iranian drone. Officials said there was no oil leakage and no injuries reported.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also confirmed it struck another container ship, although the forces misidentified it as Israeli. Reuters identified the vessel as the Singapore-flagged Haiphong Express, which was anchored next to the Al-Salmi.<\/p>\n

A third vessel in another part of the Gulf avoided damage from a separate attempted strike. The Liberian-flagged 10,100-TEU Express Rome container ship reported two projectiles striking the water nearby while sailing off the east coast of Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran is reportedly pushing the Houthis to resume their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[7133,3676,2566,34,37,39,1720,2178],"class_list":{"0":"post-45461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-persian-gulf","8":"tag-commercial-shipping","9":"tag-container-shipping","10":"tag-container-ships","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-persian-gulf","14":"tag-suez-canal","15":"tag-the-red-sea"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116325455197917216","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}