No sign of rebound in Red Sea traffic after Houthi attacks, top U.S. admiral says

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

Missile and drone attacks from Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi rebels have cut commercial maritime shipping in half in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and the top U.S. naval commander in the region says he sees little appetite among shippers to return in significant numbers to the vital waterway despite a major protection operation by U.S. and allied forces.

Admiral George Wikoff, commander of the Middle East-based U.S. 5th Fleet, meets regularly with industry leaders about the status of Operation Prosperity Guardian, the U.S.-led coalition formed in December 2023 in response to the Houthi attacks on commercial ships passing near the Bab al-Mandab Strait chokepoint between Yemen and Djibouti.

The attacks caused a 50% drop in ship traffic through the Red Sea, prompting shipping companies to begin routing vessels around Africa, while adding some 11,000 nautical miles and $1 million in fuel costs. The Houthi attacks have continued despite multiple strikes against positions on the Yemeni coastline by both the U.S. and Israel in recent months.

“We used to see about 2,000 ships go through the [Bab al-Mandab] a month. Now, we see roughly 1,000 ships go through,” Adm. Wikoff said Wednesday in a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Shipping companies have absorbed the costs and taken into account the extra transit time necessary to go around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. From a financial perspective, they said increased insurance rates and the potential for total ship loss through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal route offset any added expenses from the longer route.

“That really reflects the maritime industry’s ability to recalibrate and reinitiate their routes,” Adm. Wikoff said.

On the same day the admiral was speaking, a Houthi military spokesman said Wednesday that the group’s forces used ballistic missiles and drones while targeting a cargo vessel in the Red Sea identified as the Contship Ono along with two U.S. Navy destroyers operating in the Gulf of Aden.

Officials at U.S. Central Command said this week that they had intercepted and destroyed a drone and several missiles fired from Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen.

“This reckless and dangerous behavior by Iranian-backed Houthis continues to threaten regional stability and security,” Centcom said in a statement.

Adm. Wikoff acknowledged that global shippers won’t return in force until the environment in the region is stable.

The U.S. and its coalition partners in Operation Prosperity Guardian, along with a similar mission from the European Union, are trying to reestablish maritime security in a vast region that stretches the same distance as Boston from Miami, Adm. Wikoff said. He said the military mission can only do so much with the entire region on edge over the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, now in its 10th month.

“What we need to have is a diplomatic solution so … we don’t have to worry about trying to defend ships that are just innocently transiting the area,” he said. “What we really rely on are rational actors in the region who act rationally.”

The admiral said the U.S.-led mission has dealt the Houthis a blow, but admitted the attacks continue.

“We have certainly degraded their capabilities, but have we stopped them? No,” he said. “It’s the Houthis’ choice. They can stop this any day they want.”

Houthi leaders have launched 87 attacks against ships operating in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023, resulting in the deaths of four civilian mariners, according to the latest figures from the Joint Maritime Information Center. The rebels insist their strategy is to target ships linked to Israel, the U.S., or Great Britain in support of the militant group Hamas in its war against Israel. But the vast majority of ships that have been attacked have little to no connection to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

Some commentators have said the U.S. policy of targeting Houthi rocket and drone bases amounts to little more than a game of “Whac-a-Mole,” with new missile batteries popping up to replace the ones Western missiles destroy. Adm. Wikoff acknowledged that applying “classic deterrence policy” in that particular scenario is challenging.

“It’s very difficult to find a centralized center of gravity and use that as a potential point of deterrence,” he said. “What we’re currently doing is trying to preserve some decision space for our leadership.”

The sailors taking part in Operation Prosperity Guardian are part of the most intense naval combat environment since World War II, Adm. Wikoff said.

“Our sailors have been asked to do an extremely difficult job and they’re doing it better than we could have possibly imagined,” he said. “The crews understand what they’re doing and they understand why they’re doing it.”

As coalition commander, Adm. Wikoff said he would like additional ships and more countries to participate in the mission. But he said he understands that is ultimately a decision for their governments. The mission of Operation Prosperity Guardian is simply to protect innocent civilian mariners trying to do their vital job in a troubled region of the world, he said.

“This is a global problem. The entire globe is impacted by this problem,” Adm. Wikoff said. “This is going to require a global solution.”