As a Signed Deal Promises Opening the Hormuz Strait, Emboldened Iranians Threaten Closure of Red Sea Traffic

TEL AVIV — While President Trump hails an ending to a crisis at the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran’s appetite for holding hostage the world’s economy could hinder a full opening of that vital waterway — even as the mullahs are already threatening to shut down other maritime chokeholds.Emboldened officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps eye the southern entrypoint to the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb, as a target for their next interference of global shipping. Meanwhile a pro-America and pro-Israel coalition emerging in Africa could help counter Houthi attempts to dominate the narrow Red Sea strait, where more than 20 percent of world maritime commerce travels. President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi of Somaliland is visiting Israel this week on the occasion of the country’s opening of an embassy at Jerusalem. He could not “rule out” an Israeli base in his country, which is just across from Houthi bases on the Yemeni side of Bab el Mandeb, Mr. Abdullahi told Israel’s I24 television on Thursday. Somaliland and its neighbor, Ethiopia, “are emerging as indispensable partners for America and Israel in a broader effort to preserve freedom of navigation and contain Houthi and Iranian influence in the Red Sea region,” a senior research fellow at the Middle East Media Research, Anna Mahjar Barducci, tells the Sun. On Wednesday Mr. Trump indicated that an “ending the current crisis and opening the Strait of Hormuz” could emerge as a panacea to global economic woes. According to the Memorandum of Understanding he signed Thursday, traffic in the strait would resume within 48 hours after signing. For months, halting traffic there led to rising crude prices, including a sharp rise in gas prices in America and the world. While the memorandum postpones agreements on issues like the fate of Iran’s nuclear program to a final agreement, the opening of Hormuz and the removal of an American blockade are the deal’s most immediate promises. Mr. Trump indicated that the prospect of a global economic crisis was his top reason for ceasing fire. “I didn’t want to see an economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened,” Mr. Trump told reporters in France on Thursday. “All I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship,” he added. “Every time we said something negative, like, guess what, we’re not going to be able to settle, it would go down very big.”While Mr. Trump repeatedly says that if Tehran reneges on agreements, America would resume “bombing” Iranian targets, the mullahs are presenting the memorandum as a war victory for the Islamic Republic. “Americans should know their place and avoid confronting the Muslims,” the IRGC Quds force commander, Esmail Qaani, said this week, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Trump is trembling,” he added. America “should fear not only Hormuz and Bab Al-Mandeb, but many other locations.” Iran’s Yemeni proxy, the Houthis, shut down Bab el Mandeb shortly after October 7, 2023, declaring “solidarity” with Hamas in Gaza. While at first Houthi spokesmen said that the closure applies only to Israeli commerce, ships unrelated to the Jewish state were also hit. Red Sea traffic was then halted completely. After a ceasefire was announced in Gaza, and following Israeli and American hits on Houthi bases, the terror group removed restrictions against all Red Sea shipping.Now, though, the Yemeni group is threatening closure again. “We declare a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea, and we consider all enemy movements to be legitimate targets,” the Houthi spokesman, Yahya Saree, said last Monday. Navigation in the Red Sea, though, is not part of the current American-Iranian pact. According to the memorandum’s fourth paragraph, once the document is signed the Islamic Republic “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days.” According to paragraph five, though, Tehran “will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states.”Iranian officials are saying that along with Oman, they could eventually start charging handling fees related to insurance costs. That idea irks Iran’s Gulf neighbors. Officials in Arab capitals carefully avoid criticizing the deal in public. Like Israelis, though, many in the Gulf see the MoU as an American capitulation. “Hello, President Trump,” a top Emirati commentator, Amjad Taha, wrote. “You have undermined the trust of almost everyone around you, perhaps except J.D. Vance and the Supreme Leader of Iran. Attacking friends who stood by you during a war while defending an enemy who attacked both of you is the way countries stop trusting you, even if they keep smiling for the cameras.”

As a Signed Deal Promises Opening the Hormuz Strait, Emboldened Iranians Threaten Closure of Red Sea Traffic

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